Diego Cifuentes is an Assistant Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. His research centers around the development of mathematical optimization methods, and the application of these methods in engineering areas such as machine learning, statistics, robotics, power systems, and computer vision. He also works in the theoretical analysis of optimization methods, leveraging geometric and combinatorial information to improve efficiency and robustness. Prior to joining ISyE, he served as an applied math instructor in MIT and as a postdoctoral researcher in the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences.

He earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, and his B.S. in Mathematics and B.S. in Electronics Engineering from Universidad de los Andes.

Dr. Chen is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering. Previously he was a Research Scientist at the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Chen’s research is in the multidisciplinary fields of computational mathematics, data science, scientific machine learning, and parallel computing with various applications in materials, energy, health, and natural hazard. Specifically, his research focuses on developing fast, scalable, and parallel computational methods for integrating data and models under high-dimensional uncertainty to make (1) statistical model learning via Bayesian inference, (2) reliable system prediction with uncertainty quantification, (3) efficient data acquisition through optimal experimental design, and (4) robust control and design by stochastic optimization.

Chen has an extensive research interests in environmental science and engineering. More specifically, he is a leading researcher in the environmental applications of nanomaterials and their potential fate, transport, transformation, bioaccumulation and toxicity in the environment. His interests in environmental nanomaterials dated back in his graduate research in 1992. He has also been active on algae based bio-renewable energy and sustainable urban development. Chen has been principle and co-principal investigators for 28 research projects (by June 2010) funded by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, Boeing and other organizations. The total funds are $7 million. He has also served as a review member or panel review member in the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy evaluation committee. He has also been invited to serve as an abroad review expert for the China Changjiang Scholars Program (which is to awarded to the top researchers in China). He has published more than 40 papers and two book chapters in this field.

Chen received his Ph.D in Nankai University, China. He joined the Georgia Tech School of Civil and Environmental Engineering in May 2009.

Sudheer Chava, Ph.D, is an associate director of the Institute for Information Security & Privacy for the area of risk management, and professor of finance at Scheller College of Business at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He also serves as finance area coordinator at Scheller and as the director of the nationally top 10 ranked Master of Science in Quantitative and Computational Finance (QCF) program at Georgia Tech (a joint program by the School of Mathematics, Industrial and Systems Engineering, and Scheller).  Dr. Chava has taught a variety of courses at the undergraduate, masters, MBA and Ph.D. levels, including derivatives, risk management, valuation, credit risk, financial technology ("fintech"), and management of financial institutions. He also has taught both theoretical and empirical finance doctoral courses and is a faculty advisor to multiple doctoral students. Dr. Chava's main research interests are risk management, credit risk and financial institutions. He has extensively published on these topics in the leading finance journals such as the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Management Science. His research won a Ross Award for the best paper published in Finance Research Letters in 2008, was a finalist for the Brattle Prize for the best paper published in Journal of Finance in 2008, and was nominated for the Goldman Sachs Award for the best paper for published in Review of Finance during 2004.  Dr. Chava is the recipient of multiple external research grants such as FDIC-CFR Fellowship, Morgan Stanley Research grant, Financial Service Exchange Research grant, Q-group Research Award (2010, 2012) and GARP Research Award. He has presented his research at finance conferences such as AFA, WFA, EFA, Federal Reserve Banks and at many universities in the United States and abroad. Chava received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2003. Prior to that he earned an MBA degree from the Indian Institute of Management – Bangalore, an undergraduate degree in Computer Science Engineering, and worked as a fixed-income analyst at a leading investment bank in India. In 2014, he was awarded the Linda and Lloyd L. Byars Award for faculty research excellence at Georgia Tech and he has also received multiple research awards and fellowships at Texas A&M University.

Dr. Andre Calmon is an Assistant Professor of Operations Management at Scheller College of Business, the co-director of Sustainable-X, and a Brook Byers Institute Faculty Fellow. Before joining Georgia Tech, he was an Assistant Professor of Operations Management at INSEAD.

Andre’s research uses data, analytics, and mathematical modeling to address sustainability and efficiency issues in innovative business models. More broadly, his research investigates how organizations can use analytics and business model innovation to generate positive social and environmental impact while increasing profits. His work has been published in premier management journals such as Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, and Production and Operations Management.

Andre is a renowned educator, and his innovative pedagogy resulted in several award-winning new courses, case studies, and student-led ventures. In particular, the sustainability pedagogical material he developed was the Grand Prize winner of the Page Prize. Furthermore, Andre’s teaching fosters a “classroom-to-startup-to-research” pipeline, and much of his research examines new management challenges faced by startups founded by his former students.

Andre received a Ph.D. in Operations Research from MIT. He also holds an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) and a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the Universidade de Brasília (UnB).

Dr. Boukouvala is originally from Piraeus, which is the port of Athens in Greece. As the daughter of an airforce pilot, she travelled a lot with her family. Her first international move was actually to the USA, where she spent one year in Montgomery, Alabama. She later on lived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and Crete, Greece, before returning to Athens to get her B.S Degree in Chemical Engineering from the National Technical University in Athens. In 2008, she moved back to the US to obtain a PhD in Chemical Engineering at Rutgers University in NJ. She then worked as a Postdoctoral Associate in both Princeton University and Texas A&M University. In August 2016, Dr. Boukouvala returned to the South East US, as an Assistant Professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. 

Her research interest in Process Systems Engineering (PSE) started during her PhD years, where she worked under the supervision of Dr. Marianthi Ierapetritou, on modeling and optimization of continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing. Her background on optimization and data-driven modeling was enhanced during her years as a postdoc with the late Christodoulos A. Floudas. Dr. Boukouvala is a proud 4th generation member of the academic family tree of the father of PSE, Roger Sargent.

Dr. Bhasin's laboratory has developed strategies for analysis of transcriptome, epigenome, and proteomics data to perform multi-scale modeling of interaction among different cells molecular level and to identify novel biomarkers. He and his team are currently focusing on developing novel single-cell omics approaches to understand disease heterogeneity and the impact of treatments at single-cell resolution. He is involved in developing approaches for the analysis of multi-dimensional single-cell data by developing innovative approaches for single-cell sparsity, batch correction, annotation, and integration. Using these approaches, his group is working toward understanding: 1. Understanding heterogeneity and relapse mechanisms in pediatric hematological malignancies 2. Understanding heterogeneity and progression in multiple myeloma. 3. Development of molecular diagnostics platforms for cancer diagnosis and prognosis 4. Identification of biomarkers for early detection of pancreatic cancer, glioblastoma, and colon cancer 5. Artificial intelligence-based histopathology and radiology cancer image analysis approaches 6. Single-cell Atlas for Pediatric Cancers Additionally, our group is also developing Biomarkers associated with impaired healing of Diabetic Foot Ulcers using single-cell profiling and deep learning-driven wound image analysis. We are working collaboratively to develop innovative genomics and clinical data-driven drug repurposing approaches.

Nazanin Bassiri-Gharb joined Georgia Tech in summer 2007 as an assistant professor at the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. Prior to this, she was a senior engineer in the materials and device R&D group of MEMS Research and Innovation Center at QUALCOMM MEMS Technologies, Inc. Her work included characterization and optimization of optical and electric response of IMOD displays and research on novel materials for improved processing and reliability of IMOD. Bassiri-Gharb's research interests are in smart and energy-related materials (e.g. ferroelectric and multiferroic materials) and their application to nano- and micro-electromechanical systems. Her research projects integrate novel micro and nanofabrication techniques and processes and study of the fundamental science of these materials at the nanoscale, at the interface of physical and electrochemical phenomena.

Joy Arulraj is an assistant professor in the School of Computer Science at Georgia Institute of Technology. His research interest is in database management systems, specifically large-scale data analytics, main memory systems,  machine learning, and big code analytics. At Georgia Tech, he is a member of the Database group.