Pascal Van Hentenryck is an A. Russell Chandler III Chair and Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. Prior to this appointment, he was a professor of Computer Science at Brown University for about 20 years, he led the optimization research group (about 70 people) at National ICT Australia (NICTA) (until its merger with CSIRO), and was the Seth Bonder Collegiate Professor of Engineering at the University of Michigan. Van Hentenryck is also an Honorary Professor at the Australian National University.

Van Hentenryck is a Fellow of AAAI (the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence) and INFORMS (the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science). He has been awarded two honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Louvain and the university of Nantes, the IFORS Distinguished Lecturer Award, the Philip J. Bray Award for teaching excellence in the physical sciences at Brown University, the ACP Award for Research Excellence in Constraint Programming, the ICS INFORMS Prize for Research Excellence at the Intersection of Computer Science and Operations Research, and an NSF National Young Investigator Award. He received a Test of Time Award (20 years) from the Association of Logic Programming and numerous best paper awards, including at IJCAI and AAAI. Van Hentenryck has given plenary/semi-plenary talks at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (twice), the International Symposium on Mathematical Programming, the SIAM Optimization Conference, the Annual INFORMS Conference, NIPS, and many other conferences. Van Hentenryck is program co-chair of the AAAI’19 conference, a premier conference in Artificial Intelligence.

Van Hentenryck’s research focuses in Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, and Operations Research. His current focus is to develop methodologies, algorithms, and systems for addressing challenging problems in mobility, energy systems, resilience, and privacy. In the past, his research focused on optimization and the design and implementation of innovative optimization systems, including the CHIP programming system (a Cosytec product), the foundation of all modern constraint programming systems and the optimization programming language OPL (now an IBM Product). Van Hentenryck has also worked on computational biology, numerical analysis, and programming languages, publishing in premier journals in these areas.

Van Hentenryck runs the Seth Bonder summer Camp in Computational and Data Science for middle- and high-school students every summer. 

The Hon. John Tien is a distinguished external fellow at the Georgia Tech Strategic Energy Institute and the Georgia Tech Research Institute. He is also a distinguished professor of the practice in both the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. 

Before joining Georgia Tech, Tien was deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from 2021 to 2023. In that role, he was the DHS chief operating officer, overseeing a budget of $105 billion and facilities in all 50 U.S. states and all territories as well as more than 3,000 personnel stationed overseas in more than 75 countries. 

Alongside the secretary of Homeland Security, Deputy Secretary Tien led the policy development, operational oversight, and risk management of the department’s statutory mission areas and subordinate agencies, including cybersecurity and protection of America’s critical physical and cyber infrastructure; disaster preparedness and recovery; supply chain optimization, border security, and free and fair trade; air, pipeline, and rail security; maritime physical and cyber security; citizenship and immigration services; protection of senior officials and safeguarding the U.S. financial system; and counter-narcotics production and trafficking. 

In his broader policy administration role, Deputy Secretary Tien served as a member of the National Security Council’s Deputies Committee, the board of the National Counterterrorism Center, and the President’s Management Council. 

Upon his retirement from DHS in 2023, he was awarded two of DHS’ highest civilian awards: the DHS Distinguished Service Medal, and the United States Coast Guard Distinguished Public Service Medal. 

Tien previously served in the Obama administration as a National Security Council (NSC) senior director for Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Bush administration as an NSC director for Iraq, and the Clinton administration as a White House Fellow for the United States Trade Representative. 

From 2011 to 2021, he held various senior leadership positions at Citigroup as a managing director in their Citi Retail Services and Global Consumer Bank organizations. Before Citigroup, he was a U.S. Army officer, retiring at the rank of colonel. His Army career included commanding an 1,100-soldier armored task force in combat in Iraq, serving overseas for nearly a decade, and teaching political science at West Point. Col. Tien’s military awards and decorations include the Bronze Star Medal, Combat Action Badge, and Valorous Unit Award. 

Tien is now serving on the corporate board of directors for Union Pacific Railroad, on the Carter Presidential Center’s Board of Councilors, and as a founding board member of the Avalon Action Alliance, a nonprofit focused on nationally scaling proven healthcare programs to help heal veterans and first responders who struggle with depression, PTSD, and traumatic brain injury. He is also an executive partner and ambassador for the Master’s in Business for Veterans program at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. 

Tien holds a B.S. in civil engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point and an M.A. in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He lives with his wife Tracy in Atlanta and volunteers with and supports numerous local civic institutions including the High Museum of Art.

Valerie Thomas is the Anderson-Interface Chair of Natural Systems and Professor in the H. Milton School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, with a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy. 

Dr. Thomas's research interests are energy and materials efficiency, sustainability, industrial ecology, technology assessment, international security, and science and technology policy. Current research projects include low carbon transportation fuels, carbon capture, building construction, and electricity system development. Dr. Thomas is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the American Physical Society. She has been an American Physical Society Congressional Science Fellow, a Member of the U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board, and a Member of the USDA/DOE Biomass Research and Development Technical Advisory Committee. 

She has worked at Princeton University in the Princeton Environmental Institute and in the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, and at Carnegie Mellon University in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy.

Dr. Thomas received a B. A. in physics from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Cornell University.

Phanish Suryanarayana joined the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in August 2011. He received his B.Tech. from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India in 2005. He obtained his M.S. in Aeronautics from California Institute of Technology in 2006. Subsequently, he received his Ph.D. in Aeronautics from California Institute of Technology in 2011 for his thesis titled "Coarse-graining Kohn-Sham Density Functional Theory". His research interests are in the areas of multiscale modeling, ab-initio calculations, density functional theory, continuum mechanics and smart materials. Overall, he is interested in developing efficient numerical methods for solving problems arising in a variety of fields. On a personal level, Dr. Suryanarayana is a sports enthusiast. He plays badminton, cricket, waterpolo, and ultimate frisbee. He also is an avid gamer (PC) and enjoys playing bridge and other board game