Rebecca "Beki" Grinter is a Professor of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing & (by courtesy) the Scheller College of Business at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on improving the experience of computing by understanding the human experience in the building and using of technologies. Her work contributes to the fields of human-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, and computer supported cooperative work. She has also worked in the areas of robotics, networking, security, and software engineering. She has published over 80 scholarly articles, served as Papers Chair (2006) & Best Papers Chair (2010) for the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), the premier conference for human-computer interaction. In 2013 she was elected to the CHI Academy. In 2010 she was recognized as a Distinguished Alumna of the University of California, Irvine. Before joining the faculty at Georgia Tech, she was a Member of Research Staff in the Computer Science Laboratory of Xerox PARC and a Member of Technical Staff in the Software Production Research Department of Bell Laboratories. She was also a visiting scholar at Rank Xerox EuroPARC. She holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Information and Computer Science both from the University of California, Irvine, and a B.Sc. (Hons) in Computer Science from the University of Leeds. Affiliations GVU Center

Dr. Matthew Gombolay is the Anne and Alan Taetle Assistant Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University in 2011, a S.M. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT in 2013, and a Ph.D. in Autonomous Systems from MIT in 2017. Gombolay's research interests span robotics, AI/ML, human-robot interaction, and operations research. Between defending his dissertation and joining the faculty at Georgia Tech, Gombolay served as a technical staff member at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory transitioning his research for the U.S. Navy, earning him an R&D 100 Award for his development of "Human-Machine Collaborative Optimization via Apprenticeship Scheduling" (COVAS). His publication record includes a best paper award from American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics, and he was selected as a DARPA Riser in 2018. Dr. Gombolay's research has been highlighted in media outlets such as CNN, PBS, NBC, CBS, Harvard Business Review, Gizmodo, and national public radio

Ashok Goel is a Professor of Computer Science in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, USA. He obtained his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. At Georgia Tech, he is also the Director of the Ph.D. Program in Human-Centered Computing, a Co-Director of the Center for Biologically Inspired Design, and a Fellow of Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems. For more than thirty years, Ashok has conducted research into artificial intelligence, cognitive science and human-centered computing, with a focus on computational design, modeling and creativity. His recent work has explored design thinking, analogical thinking and systems thinking in biological inspired design (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiRDQ4hr9i8), and his research is now developing virtual research assistants for modeling biological systems. Ashok teaches a popular course on knowledge-based AI as part of Georgia Tech's program on Online Masters of Science in Computer Science. He has pioneered the development of virtual teaching assistants, such as Jill Watson, for answering questions in online discussion forums (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbCguICyfTA). Chronicle of Higher Education recently called virtual assistants exemplified by Jill Watson as one of the most transformative educational technologies in the digital era. Ashok is the Editor-in-Chief of AAAI's AI Magazine.

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).

Athanassios (Thanos) Economou is Professor at the School of Architecture in the College of Design, and Adjunct Professor at the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Economou’s teaching and research are in the areas of shape grammars, computational design, computer-aided design and design theory, with over sixty published papers in these areas. He is the Director of the Shape Computation Lab, a research group that explores how the visual nature of shape can be formally implemented with new technologies to enable new paradigms in visual computation, design automation, creative design and digital heritage. Recent projects include the Shape Machine, a new computational technology that allows shape matching in CAD systems, and Courtsweb, the most significant visual database on Federal Courthouses, sponsored by GSA and US.Courts. Design projects from his studios at Georgia Tech have received prestigious awards in international and national architectural competitions. He has been invited to give talks, seminars, and workshops at several universities including MIT, Harvard, TU Vienna, U. Michigan, KAIST, Chiao Tung U Taiwan, Emory, Seoul National U, Cambridge U, Tsinghua U, UCLA, NTUA, U.Thessaly, U.Aegean, among others. Dr. Economou holds a Diploma in Architecture from NTUA, Athens, Greece, an M.Arch from USC, and a PhD in Architecture from UCLA.

Dr. Jon Duke is the director of the Center for Health Analytics and Informatics at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and a principal research scientist at the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing. He began working at Georgia Tech in 2016. His career before Tech was entirely in medical environments, both as a physician and a researcher.  

At Georgia Tech his research focuses on advancing techniques for identifying patients of interest from diverse data sources with applications spanning research, quality, and clinical domains. 

Dr. Duke has led over $21 million in funded research for industry, government, and foundation partners. Dr. Duke’s research focuses on advancing techniques for identifying patients of interest from diverse data sources with applications spanning research, quality, and clinical domains.  He led the Merck-Regenstrief Partnership in Healthcare Innovation and was a founding member of OHDSI, an open-source international health data analytics collaborative.  In addition to numerous peer-reviewed publications, his work has been featured in the lay media including the New York Times, NPR, and MSNBC.  Dr. Duke completed his medical degree at Harvard Medical School and a master's in human-computer interaction at Indiana University.

Dr. Dellaert does research in the areas of robotics and computer vision, which present some of the most exciting challenges to anyone interested in artificial intelligence. He is especially keen on Bayesian inference approaches to the difficult inverse problems that keep popping up in these areas. In many cases, exact solutions to these problems are intractable, and as such he is interested in examining whether Monte Carlo (sampling-based) approxIMaTions are applicable in those cases.

Edmond Chow is a Professor in the School of Computational Science in the College of Computing. He previously held positions at D. E. Shaw Research and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. His research is in developing and applying numerical methods and high-performance computing to solve large-scale scientific computing problems and seeks to enable scientists and engineers to solve larger problems more efficiently using physical simulation. Specific interests include numerical linear algebra (preconditioning, multilevel methods, sparse matrix computations) and parallel methods for quantum chemistry, molecular dynamics, and Brownian/Stokesian dynamics.  Chow earned an Honors B.A.Sc. in systems design engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada, in 1993, and a Ph.D. in computer science with a minor in aerospace engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1997. Chow was awarded the 2009 ACM Gordon Bell prize and the 2002 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).