About
Plenary Speakers
Plenary and Fireside Chat
Jeff Dean joined Google in 1999 and is currently a Google Senior Fellow and SVP for Google AI and related research efforts. His teams are working on systems for speech recognition, computer vision, language understanding, and various other machine learning tasks. He has co-designed/implemented many generations of Google's crawling, indexing, and query serving systems, and co-designed/implemented major pieces of Google's initial advertising and AdSense for Content systems. He is also a co-designer and co-implementor of Google's distributed computing infrastructure, including the MapReduce, BigTable and Spanner systems, protocol buffers, the open-source TensorFlow system for machine learning, and a variety of internal and external libraries and developer tools.
Jeff received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington in 1996, working with Craig Chambers on whole-program optimization techniques for object-oriented languages. He received a B.S. in computer science & economics from the University of Minnesota in 1990. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS), and a winner of the ACM Prize in Computing.
Early Career Plenary Speakers
Ivan Brugere, University of Illinois at Chicago
Dr. Ivan Brugere received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Chicago, focusing on graph representation learning in data-driven biology and ecology applications. He was recently a research scientist in AI For Good at Salesforce Research. He has been an Electronic Privacy and Security IGERT fellow, a Google Lime Scholar and co-organizer of the Broadening Participation in Data Mining workshop at the KDD conference. His current work focuses on fairness, bias, and interpretability in novel application areas, as well as machine learning on graphs.
Juan Sequeda, Principal Scientist, data.world
Juan F. Sequeda is the Principal Scientist at data.world. He joined through the acquisition of Capsenta, a company he founded as a spin-off from his research. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from The University of Texas at Austin.
Juan is the recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, received 2nd Place in the 2013 Semantic Web Challenge for his work on ConstituteProject.org, Best Student Research Paper at the 2014 International Semantic Web Conference and the 2015 Best Transfer and Innovation Project awarded by the Institute for Applied Informatics. Juan is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Web Semantics, member of multiple program committees (ISWC, ESWC, WWW, AAAI, IJCAI). He was the General Chair of AMW2018, PC chair of ISWC 2017 In-Use track, co-creator of COLD workshop (7 years co-located at ISWC). He has served as a bridge between academia and industry as the current chair of the Property Graph Schema Working Group, member of the Graph Query Languages task force of the Linked Data Benchmark Council (LDBC) and past invited expert member and standards editor at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Wearing his scientific hat, Juan's goal is to reliably create knowledge from inscrutable data. His research interests are at the intersection of Logic and Data for (ontology-based) data integration and semantic/graph data management, and what is now called Knowledge Graphs.
Wearing his business hat, Juan is a product manager, does business development and strategy, technical sales and works with customers to understand their problems to translate back to R&D.
Kyla McMullen, Assistant Professor University of Florida
Dr. Kyla McMullen earned her Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), where she was also a Meyerhoff Scholar. She earned her Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan (2007-2012). While earning her Ph.D. she was also a faculty member at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. At Wayne State University she taught computer literacy courses to over 2,000 students. Dr. McMullen is the first (and currently the only) woman of color to earn a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan. She is currently a tenure-track faculty member in the University of Florida’s Computer & Information Sciences & Engineering Department. Dr. McMullen has a personal commitment to encouraging women and minorities to pursue careers in computing and other STEM fields. She is the author of “Beautiful, Black, and Brainy” and “Brilliant is the New Black” which showcase hundreds of exceptional young African Americans who excel in STEM fields and don’t fit the typical “scientist” stereotype.
Dr. McMullen’s research interests are in the perception, applications, and development of 3D audio technologies. In this line of research, sounds are digitally filtered such that when they are played over headphones, the listener perceives the sound as being emitted from a specific location in their own physical space. Think of it as “surround sound over headphones”. She is using this research to create realistic virtual environments, enhance data sonification, augment assistive technologies for persons with visual impairments, and decrease cognitive load in multimodal systems. She has recently earned the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award to further support her research in this area. She is also the PI of an NSF S-STEM award to augment the financial load of graduate school for PhD students.
Dr. McMullen is also senior personnel for NSF’s Institute for African-American Mentoring in Computing Sciences (iAAMCS) effort to broaden participation in the field of computing. In this role, she has served as the conference chair for the National Society of Blacks in Computing. The conference gathers Black computing students, faculty, and industry professionals for professional development, career progress, networking, and bonding. In addition, Dr. McMullen co-hosts Modern Figures Podcast, elevating the voices of Black women in computing. This podcast is a collaborative effort iAAMCS and The National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT ) to highlight the often neglected stories of Black women in computing.
Paul Taele, Visiting Assistant Professor, Texas A&M University
Paul Taele is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University (TAMU)'s Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and the Assistant Lab Director of the Sketch Recognition Lab at TAMU.
Paul's current research interests are in intelligent user interfaces (IUI), including activity recognition-driven interfaces such as sketch, motion, and navigation. His recent primary focus has been on developing and deploying pen-driven intelligent tutoring systems for improving remote classroom instruction and homework study through instructor-emulated assessment and interactive visual feedback. His research efforts have been published at highly-visible computing conferences and journals such as IAAI, CHI, MobileHCI, TiiS, and IJHCS.
Prior to his current position, Paul received a dual Bachelors of Science in Computer Sciences and in Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin, and a Master of Science and a Doctoral degree in Computer Science at Texas A&M University. Additionally, Paul studied at National Chengchi University in Taipei for two years, Taiwan under a full Chinese Mandarin language scholarship, and has received two National Science Foundation summer fellowships to conduct research abroad at National Taiwan University's Human-Computer Interaction Lab and Singapore Management University's Human-Computer Interaction Group, respectively.
Originally from Los Angeles, California, Paul's air force military family moved to San Antonio, Texas prior to his university and graduate school studies. Paul is a Native Pacific Islander of Samoan heritage, and whose parents originally hail from American Samoa.
Early Career Plenary Speakers
Ivan Brugere, University of Illinois at Chicago
Dr. Ivan Brugere received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Chicago, focusing on graph representation learning in data-driven biology and ecology applications. He was recently a research scientist in AI For Good at Salesforce Research. He has been an Electronic Privacy and Security IGERT fellow, a Google Lime Scholar and co-organizer of the Broadening Participation in Data Mining workshop at the KDD conference. His current work focuses on fairness, bias, and interpretability in novel application areas, as well as machine learning on graphs.
Juan Sequeda, Principal Scientist, data.world
Juan F. Sequeda is the Principal Scientist at data.world. He joined through the acquisition of Capsenta, a company he founded as a spin-off from his research. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from The University of Texas at Austin.
Juan is the recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, received 2nd Place in the 2013 Semantic Web Challenge for his work on ConstituteProject.org, Best Student Research Paper at the 2014 International Semantic Web Conference and the 2015 Best Transfer and Innovation Project awarded by the Institute for Applied Informatics. Juan is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Web Semantics, member of multiple program committees (ISWC, ESWC, WWW, AAAI, IJCAI). He was the General Chair of AMW2018, PC chair of ISWC 2017 In-Use track, co-creator of COLD workshop (7 years co-located at ISWC). He has served as a bridge between academia and industry as the current chair of the Property Graph Schema Working Group, member of the Graph Query Languages task force of the Linked Data Benchmark Council (LDBC) and past invited expert member and standards editor at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Wearing his scientific hat, Juan's goal is to reliably create knowledge from inscrutable data. His research interests are at the intersection of Logic and Data for (ontology-based) data integration and semantic/graph data management, and what is now called Knowledge Graphs.
Wearing his business hat, Juan is a product manager, does business development and strategy, technical sales and works with customers to understand their problems to translate back to R&D.
Kyla McMullen, Assistant Professor University of Florida
Dr. Kyla McMullen earned her Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), where she was also a Meyerhoff Scholar. She earned her Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan (2007-2012). While earning her Ph.D. she was also a faculty member at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. At Wayne State University she taught computer literacy courses to over 2,000 students. Dr. McMullen is the first (and currently the only) woman of color to earn a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan. She is currently a tenure-track faculty member in the University of Florida’s Computer & Information Sciences & Engineering Department. Dr. McMullen has a personal commitment to encouraging women and minorities to pursue careers in computing and other STEM fields. She is the author of “Beautiful, Black, and Brainy” and “Brilliant is the New Black” which showcase hundreds of exceptional young African Americans who excel in STEM fields and don’t fit the typical “scientist” stereotype.
Dr. McMullen’s research interests are in the perception, applications, and development of 3D audio technologies. In this line of research, sounds are digitally filtered such that when they are played over headphones, the listener perceives the sound as being emitted from a specific location in their own physical space. Think of it as “surround sound over headphones”. She is using this research to create realistic virtual environments, enhance data sonification, augment assistive technologies for persons with visual impairments, and decrease cognitive load in multimodal systems. She has recently earned the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award to further support her research in this area. She is also the PI of an NSF S-STEM award to augment the financial load of graduate school for PhD students.
Dr. McMullen is also senior personnel for NSF’s Institute for African-American Mentoring in Computing Sciences (iAAMCS) effort to broaden participation in the field of computing. In this role, she has served as the conference chair for the National Society of Blacks in Computing. The conference gathers Black computing students, faculty, and industry professionals for professional development, career progress, networking, and bonding. In addition, Dr. McMullen co-hosts Modern Figures Podcast, elevating the voices of Black women in computing. This podcast is a collaborative effort iAAMCS and The National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT ) to highlight the often neglected stories of Black women in computing.
Paul Taele, Visiting Assistant Professor, Texas A&M University
Paul Taele is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University (TAMU)'s Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and the Assistant Lab Director of the Sketch Recognition Lab at TAMU.
Paul's current research interests are in intelligent user interfaces (IUI), including activity recognition-driven interfaces such as sketch, motion, and navigation. His recent primary focus has been on developing and deploying pen-driven intelligent tutoring systems for improving remote classroom instruction and homework study through instructor-emulated assessment and interactive visual feedback. His research efforts have been published at highly-visible computing conferences and journals such as IAAI, CHI, MobileHCI, TiiS, and IJHCS.
Prior to his current position, Paul received a dual Bachelors of Science in Computer Sciences and in Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin, and a Master of Science and a Doctoral degree in Computer Science at Texas A&M University. Additionally, Paul studied at National Chengchi University in Taipei for two years, Taiwan under a full Chinese Mandarin language scholarship, and has received two National Science Foundation summer fellowships to conduct research abroad at National Taiwan University's Human-Computer Interaction Lab and Singapore Management University's Human-Computer Interaction Group, respectively.
Originally from Los Angeles, California, Paul's air force military family moved to San Antonio, Texas prior to his university and graduate school studies. Paul is a Native Pacific Islander of Samoan heritage, and whose parents originally hail from American Samoa.