Kai Wang recently attained his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Harvard University where he was advised by Professor Milind Tambe. His research interests include multi-agent systems, computational game theory, machine learning and optimization, and their applications in public health and conservation. One of Wang's key technical contributions includes decision-focused learning, which integrates machine learning and optimization to strengthen learning performance; with his algorithms currently deployed assisting a non-profit in India focused on improving maternal and child health. He is the recipient of the Siebel Scholars award and the best paper runner-up award at AAAI 2021. 

Raphaël Pestourie earned his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics and an AM in Statistics from Harvard University in 2020. Prior to Georgia Tech, he was a postdoctoral associate at MIT Mathematics, where he worked closely with the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. Raphaël’s research focuses on scientific machine learning at the intersection of applied mathematics and machine learning and inverse design via scientific machine learning and large-scale electromagnetic design. 

Kamran Paynabar is the Fouts Family Early Career Professor and Associate Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering from Iran in 2002 and 2004, respectively, and his Ph.D. in Industrial and Operations Engineering from The University of Michigan in 2012. He also holds an M.A. in Statistics from The University of Michigan. His research interests comprise both applied and methodological aspects of machine-learning and statistical modeling integrated with engineering principles. He is a recipient of the INFORMS Data Mining Best Student Paper Award, the Best Application Paper Award from IIE Transactions, the Best QSR refereed paper from INFORMS, and the Best Paper Award from POMS. He has been recognized with the Georgia Tech campus level 2014 CETL/BP Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award and the Provost Teaching and Learning Fellowship. He served as the chair of QSR of INFORMS, and the president of QCRE of IISE.

Suresh Marru is a research professor dedicated to advancing science and engineering through AI and cyberinfrastructure. Over the past two decades, he has focused on accelerating and democratizing computational science. His work includes the development of science gateways and the pioneering of the Apache Airavata distributed systems framework.

In his current role as the Director of Georgia Tech's ARTISAN Center, his team is at the forefront of pioneering efforts to integrate AI into diverse scientific domains. His group is dedicated to bridging the gap between theory, experimentation, and computation by fostering open-source integration frameworks. These frameworks automate research processes, optimize complex models, and integrate disparate scientific data with simulation engines.

Collaboration is at the heart of Suresh’s ethos. He has had the privilege of working alongside brilliant scientists and technologists, contributing to groundbreaking research in domains such as geosciences, neuroscience, and molecular dynamics. These collaborations have not only accelerated scientific discovery but have also offered valuable insights into the potential of AI in scientific innovation.

Beyond his professional endeavors, Suresh is deeply passionate about open science and open-source software. He also believes in building synergies between academia and industry. He has played an instrumental role in a series of tech startups. Currently, he serves as the Chief Technology Officer at Folia, a company dedicated to unleashing the power of annotations.

Pan Li joined Georgia Tech in 2023 Spring. Before that, Pan Li worked at the Purdue Computer Science Department as an assistant professor from the 2020 fall to the 2023 Spring. Before joining Purdue, Pan worked as a postdoc at Stanford Computer Science Department from 2019 to 2020. Pan did his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Pan Li has got the NSF CAREER award, the Best Paper award from the Learning on Graph Conference, Sony Faculty Innovation Award, JPMorgan Faculty Award.

Alexander Lerch is an Associate Professor at the School of Music, Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his "Diplom-Ingenieur'' (EE) and his PhD (Audio Communications) from Technical University Berlin. Lerch joined Georgia Tech in 2013 and teaches classes on music signal processing, computational music analysis, audio technology, and audio software engineering. Before he joined Georgia Tech, Lerch was Head of Research at his company zplane.development, an industry leader in music technology licensing. zplane technology includes algorithms such as time-stretching and automatic key detection and is used by millions of musicians and producers world-wide.       

Lerch's research focuses on teaching computers to listen to and comprehend music. His research field, Music Information Retrieval (MIR), positions him at the intersection of signal processing, machine learning, music psychology, and systematic musicology. His Music Informatics Group (http://www.musicinformatics.gatech.edu) creates artificially intelligent software for music generation, production, and consumption and generates new insights into music and its performance.

Lerch authored more than 40 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. His text book "An Introduction to Audio Content Analysis" (IEEE/Wiley 2012) and the accompanying online materials at www.AudioContentAnalysis.org helped define educational practice in the field.

Irfan Essa is a Professor in the School of Interactive Computing and Senior Associate Dean in the College of Computing (CoC), at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Professor Essa works in the areas of Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics, Computer Graphics, and Social Computing, with potential impact on Content Creation, Analysis and Production (e.g., Computational Photography & Video, Image-based Modeling and Rendering, etc.) Human Computer Interaction, Artificial Intelligence, Computational Behavioral/Social Sciences, and Computational Journalism research.He has published over 150 scholarly articles in leading journals and conference venues on these topics and several of his papers have also won best paper awards. He has been awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and was elected an IEEE Fellow. He has held extended research consulting positions with Disney Research and Google Research and also was an Adjunct Faculty Member at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute. He joined Georgia Tech in 1996 after his earning his Master's (1990), Ph.D. (1994), and holding a research faculty position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab (1988-1996).