Gary J. Bassell, Ph.D. joined the faculty at Emory University School of Medicine in 2005, where he is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Cell Biology. His personal lab’s main interest is in understanding the mechanisms and functions of mRNA transport and local protein synthesis in neurons of the central and peripheral nervous system. The lab utilizes in vitro and in vivo mouse models and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to study the basic mechanism, regulation and function of mRNA localization and local translation in axonal growth cones and dendritic spines. Prior to moving Emory, Dr. Bassell was a member of the faculty at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in the Department of Anatomy and Structural Biology (1995-1998) and subsequently in the Department of Neuroscience and Rose Kennedy Center for Mental Retardation (1998-2005). 

Ryanodine receptors (RyRs) are intracellular ion channels that mediate the release of calcium from intracellular stores. RyR1 and RyR2 are the predominate isoforms in skeletal and cardiac muscle, respectively where they play a central role in excitation-contraction coupling. RyRs are the largest known ion channels and are regulated by a multitude of endogenous effectors including ions, small molecules, and accessory proteins. An area of interest is the regulation of these channels by endogenous effectors, especially as it relates to altered contractile function associated with cardiac ischemia, skeletal muscle fatigue and aging. 

Because of their central role in cellular calcium regulation, defects in RyR channels can lead to potentially fatal disorders. Mutations in RyR1 give rise to the pharmacogenetic skeletal muscle disorder, malignant hyperthermia (MH). RyR2 mutations have been identified in catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia. We are interested in determining the molecular mechanisms by which these mutations alter RyR channel function. 

We analyze channel function on multiples levels of organization. Sarcoplasmic reticulum vesicle [3H]ryanodine binding is used to examine large populations of channels. We incorporate channels into artificial lipid bilayers in order to record single channel currents and assess channel kinetics. Calcium release from permeabilized muscle fibers provides a method of examining RyR function in situ. My research has two long-range goals. The first is to understand how intracellular calcium is regulated and how alterations in the regulation effects cell function. The second goal is to understand the RyR regulatory sites that might be exploited for the development of pharmacological compounds to treat disorders of cellular calcium regulation.

Stephen Balakirsky is the Chief Scientist for the Aerospace, Transportation & Advanced Systems Laboratory at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), and the Director of Technical Initiatives at the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB) at Georgia Tech.

Balakirsky’s research interests include robotic architectures, planning, bio-automation, robotic standards, and autonomous systems testing. His work in knowledge driven robotics couples real-time sensors and knowledge repositories to allow for flexibility and agility in robotic systems ranging from assembly and manufacturing systems to surveillance and logistics systems. The framework promotes software reuse and the ability to detect and correct for execution errors.

Previously, Balakirsky worked as a project manager at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and was a senior research engineer at the Army Research Laboratory (ARL). At ARL, Balakirsky performed mobile robotics research in several areas, including command and control, mapping, human-computer interfaces, target tracking, vision processing and tele-operated control.

Julia Babensee is an Associate Professor in the Walter H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. Dr. Babensee is affiliated with the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience and the Georgia Tech/Emory Center for the Engineering of Living Tissue. 

Dr. Babensee is a member of the Cell and Molecular Biology Research Program at Winship Cancer Institute. She is also a permanent member of the NIH Bioengineering, Technology and Surgical Sciences study section. She is actively involved in several professional societies with service including SFB Member-at-Large (2008-2009) and Program Chair for the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Biomedical Engineering Society in Atlanta, Georgia. 

Her research program is in the area of engineering of inflammatory and immune responses focused on understanding host responses to combination products. Her research interests also include: Biomaterial interactions with dendritic cells, tissue engineering for rheumatoid arthritis, and biomaterial-applied immunology.

Babensee received her Ph.D. from University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine.

Turgay Ayer is the Virginia C. and Joseph C. Mello Chair and a professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. Ayer also serves as the research director for healthcare analytics and business intelligence in the Center for Health & Humanitarian Systems at Georgia Tech and holds a courtesy appointment at Emory Medical School.

His research focuses on healthcare analytics and socially responsible business analytics with a particular emphasis on practice-focused research. His research papers have been published in top tier management, engineering, and medical journals, and covered by popular media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, U.S. News, and NPR.

Ayer has received over $2.5 million grant funding and several awards for his work, including an NSF CAREER Award (2015), first place in MSOM Responsible Research in Operations Management (2019), first place in the MSOM Best Practice-Based Research Competition (2017), INFORMS Franz Edelman Laureate Award (2017), and Society for Medical Decision Making Lee Lusted Award (2009).

Ayer serves an associate editor for Operations Research, Management Science, and MSOM, and is a past president of the INFORMS Health Application Society. He received a B.S. in industrial engineering from Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

As a student, Aqua Asberry, HT(ASCP)CM, studied chemistry and was determined to become a forensic scientist. An intuitive mentor steered her towards histology, and Ms. Asberry is currently Research Histology Manager at Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Georgia Tech.

Dr. Arvanitis joined Georgia Institute of Technology as a joint Assistant Professor at the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering in August 2016. Before joining Georgia Institute of Technology he was Instructor (Research Faculty) at Harvard Medical Scholl and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Arvanitis has also worked as a research fellow in the Biomedical Ultrasonics, Biotherapy and Biopharmaceuticals Laboratory at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oxford.

Prof. AlRegib is currently the John and Marilu McCarty Chair Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His group is the Omni Lab for Intelligent Visual Engineering and Science (OLIVES) at Georgia Tech. In 2012, he was named the Director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Energy and Geo Processing (CeGP). He is the director of the Center for Signal and Information Processing (CSIP). He also served as the Director of Georgia Tech’s Initiatives and Programs in MENA between 2015 and 2018. He has authored and co-authored more than 300 articles in international journals and conference proceedings. He has been issued several U.S. patents and invention disclosures. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.

Prof. AlRegib received the ECE Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award in 2001 and both the CSIP Research and the CSIP Service Awards in 2003. In 2008, he received the ECE Outstanding Junior Faculty Member Award. In 2017, he received the 2017 Denning Faculty Award for Global Engagement. He and his students received the Beat Paper Award in ICIP 2019. He received the 2024 ECE Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award at Georgia Tech. He and his students received the Best Paper Award in ICIP 2019 and the 2023 EURASIP Best Paper Award for Image communication Journal.

Prof. AlRegib participated in a number of activities. He has served as Technical Program co-Chair for ICIP 2020 and ICIP 2024. He served two terms as a member of the IEEE SPS Technical Committees on Multimedia Signal Processing (MMSP) and Image, Video, and Multidimensional Signal Processing (IVMSP), 2015-2017 and 2018-2020. He was a member of the Editorial Boards of both the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (TIP), 2009-2022, and the Elsevier Journal Signal Processing: Image Communications, 2014-2022. He was a member of the editorial board of the Wireless Networks Journal (WiNET), 2009-2016 and the IEEE Transaction on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (CSVT), 2014-2016. He was an Area Chair for ICME 2016/17 and the Tutorial Chair for ICIP 2016. He served as the chair of the Special Sessions Program at ICIP’06, the area editor for Columns and Forums in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (SPM), 2009–12, the associate editor for IEEE SPM, 2007-09, the Tutorials co-chair in ICIP’09, a guest editor for IEEE J-STSP, 2012, a track chair in ICME’11, the co-chair of the IEEE MMTC Interest Group on 3D Rendering, Processing, and Communications, 2010-12, the chair of the Speech and Video Processing Track at Asilomar 2012, and the Technical Program co-Chair of IEEE GlobalSIP, 2014. He lead a team that organized the IEEE VIP Cup, 2017 and the 2023 IEEEE VIP Cup. He delivered short courses and several tutorials at international events such as BigData, NeurIPS, ICIP, ICME, CVPR, AAAI, and WACV.

In the Omni Lab for Intelligent Visual Engineering and Science (OLIVES), he and his group work on robust and interpretable machine learning algorithms, uncertainty and trust, and human in the loop algorithms. The group studies interventions into AI systems to enhance their trustworthiness. The group has demonstrated their work on a wide range of applications such as Autonomous Systems, Medical Imaging, and Subsurface Imaging. The group is interested in advancing the fundamentals as well as the deployment of such systems in real-world scenarios. His research group is working on projects related to machine learning, image and video processing, image and video understanding, subsurface imaging, perception in visual data processing, healthcare intelligence, and video analytics. The primary applications of the research span from Autonomous Vehicles to Portable AI-based Ophthalmology and Eye Exam and from Microscopic Imaging to Seismic Interpretation. The group was the first to introduce modern machine learning to seismic interpretation.

In 2024, and after more than three years of continuous work, he co-founded Georgia Tech’s AI Makerspace. The AI Makerspace is a resource for the entire campus community to access AI. Its purpose is to democratize access to AI. Together with his team, they are developing tools and services for the AI Makerspace via a VIP Team called AI Makerspace Nexus. In addition, he created two AI classes from scratch with innovative hands-on exercises using the AI Makerspace. One class is the ECE4252/8803 FunML class (Fundamentals of Machine Learning) where students learn the basics of Machine Learning as well as eight weeks of Deep learning both mathematically and using hands-on exercises on real-world data. The second class is a sophomore-level AI Foundations class (AI First) that teaches any student from any college the basics of AI such as data literacy, learning, decision, planning, and ethics using theory and hands-on exercises on the AI Makerspace. Prof. AlRegib wrote two textbooks for both classes.

Prof. AlRegib has provided services and consultation to several firms, companies, and international educational and R&D organizations. He has been a witness expert in a number of patents infringement cases and Inter Partes Review (IRP) cases.

Kyle Allison is a bioengineer and chemical engineer whose research has focused on understanding the behavior of bacteria in order to improve antibiotics. The Allison Lab tracks individual bacteria using microscopy approaches they developed.  Kyle and his lab have made foundational discoveries in the metabolite potentiation of antibiotics, the resuscitation of persistent bacteria, and the multicellularity of E. coli (the best-studied unicellular organism).  Kyle was named to the first “30 under 30” list in Science by Forbes Magazine and received the NIH Director’s Early Independence Award to bypass traditional postdoctoral training. His research has been published in Nature, PNAS, Molecular Systems Biology, Nature Methods, Nature Chemical Biology, and other journals.  Kyle also holds a master’s degree in literature and wrote his thesis on James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.