Alex Adams’s research focuses on designing, fabricating, and implementing new ubiquitous and wearable sensing systems. In particular, he is interested in how to develop these systems using equity-driven design principles for healthcare. Alex leverages sensing, signal processing, and fabrication techniques to design, deploy, and evaluate novel sensing technologies.

Originally a musician, Alex became fascinated by how he could capture and manipulate sounds through analog hardware and digital signal processing, which led him back to his hometown (Concord, NC). Alex completed his BS at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2014 and his Ph.D. at Cornell University in 2021 (advised by Professor Tanzeem Choudhury). Alex then became the resident Research Scientist for the Precision Behavioral Health Initiative at Cornell Tech (NYC) until the fall of 2022, when he joined the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Currently, his research focuses on the equity-driven design and the development of multi-modal sensing systems to simultaneously assess mental and physical health to enable a new class of mobile health technologies.

Nate Damen is a Research Engineer I with Aerospace, Transportation and Advanced Systems Laboratory of Georgia Tech Research Institute. Damen’s work at ATAS has focused on Mixed Reality applications, robotics, the automation of CAR-T cellular expansions, and bioreactor design. Before joining GTRI, Damen conducted research into the manipulation of textiles with Softwear Automation and the design of deformable parcel manipulation systems with Dorabot. His creative work ATLTVHEAD with the Atlanta Beltline Inc., includes the creation of several wearable electronic systems for remote computing and novel interactions between wearable systems and live user input from those walking the Atlanta Beltline. 

Jay Patel, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Orthopaedics at Emory and a Health Science Specialist at the Atlanta VA. Patel joined the faculty at Emory in September 2020, and his program focuses on the repair and regeneration of musculoskeletal tissues (e.g., cartilage, meniscus), with an emphasis on using micro-scale findings to drive macro-scale therapies. His lab uses a combination of biomechanics, biomaterials, mechano-biology, in vitro systems, and functional in vivo models to motivate, design, develop, and evaluate novel treatments and therapeutics for orthopaedic injuries. He received his Bachelor’s in Bioengineering from Rice University and his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Rutgers University. He then pursued his postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, working on a variety of cartilage tissue engineering and mechano-biology projects. Patel has published over 20 manuscripts, has presented at numerous international conference meetings, and won several prestigious awards, including the Excellence in Research Award (2018) from the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine. Moreover, both his graduate and postdoctoral work resulted in pending patent applications, and the formation of startup companies with active small-business funding, demonstrating his ultimate goal of translating these approaches to the clinic.
 

Jennifer S. Singh is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the School of History and Sociology in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech. She has a PhD in sociology from the University of California, San Francisco and specializes in medical sociology and science and technology studies. Her research investigates the intersections of genetics, health and society, which draws on her experiences of working in the biotechnology industry in molecular biology and as a public health researcher at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Her book, Multiple Autisms: Spectrums of Advocacy and Genomic Science, explores a range of perspectives from scientists, activists, parents, and people living with autism surrounding the rise and implementation of autism genetics research. Her current research investigates structural inequities to autism diagnosis and services based on race, social class and gender. 

Jun Ueda received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from Kyoto University, Japan, in 1994, 1996, and 2002 all in Mechanical Engineering. From 1996 to 2000, he was a Research Engineer at the Advanced Technology Research and Development Center, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Japan. He was an Assistant Professor of Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan, from 2002 to 2008. During 2005-2008, he was a visiting scholar and lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the G. W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology as an Assistant Professor in 2008 where he is currently a Professor. He received Fanuc FA Robot Foundation Best Paper Award in 2005, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Academic Career Award in 2009, Advanced Robotics Best Paper Award in 2015, and Nagamori Award in 2021. 

Dr. Hekman completed her BA in Biophysics and Spanish Literature at Johns Hopkins. She then chose to pursue medicine and completed her MD and PhD in Molecular Medicine at the University of Chicago, where she found Vascular Surgery. She completed her Vascular Surgery Integrated Residency at Northwestern University, including a post-doctoral research fellowship in the lab of Dr. Jason Wertheim, MD, PhD. There she discovered the role of autophagy in the longevity and health of endothelial cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells. She joined faculty in Vascular Surgery at Emory and the Atlanta VA Healthcare System in 2021, where her lab focuses on generating patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cell-derived endothelial cells to produce personalized regenerative therapies for vascular disease.

Munmun De Choudhury is an Associate Professor at the School of Interactive Computing in Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. De Choudhury is renowned for her groundbreaking contributions to the fields of computational social science, human-computer interaction, and digital mental health. Through fostering interdisciplinary collaborations across academia, industry, and public health sectors, Dr. De Choudhury and her collaborators have contributed significantly to advancing the development of computational techniques for early detection and intervention in mental health, as well as in unpacking how social media use benefits or harms mental well-being. De Choudhury's contributions have been recognized worldwide, with significant scholarly impact evidenced by numerous awards like induction into the SIGCHI Academy and the 2023 SIGCHI Societal Impact Award. Beyond her academic achievements, Dr. De Choudhury is a proactive community leader, a persistent contributor to policy-framing and advocacy initiatives, and is frequently sought for expert advice to governments, and national and international media.

Mathieu Dahan is an Assistant Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. His research interests are in combinatorial optimization, game theory, and predictive analytics, with applications to service operations management and disaster logistics. His primary focus is on developing strategies for improving the resilience of large-scale infrastructures — particularly, transportation and natural gas networks — in the face of correlated failures such as security attacks and natural disasters. Current projects include: (i) Strategic design of network inspection systems; and (ii) Analytics-based response operations under uncertainty.

Dr. Dahan received a Ph.D. and M.S. in Computational Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a M.Eng. and B.Eng. from the École Centrale Paris, and a B.S. in Mathematics from Paris-Sud University. He is the recipient of the MIT Robert Thurber Fellowship, the MIT Robert Guenassia Award, the Honorable Mention for the J-WAFS Fellowships, and the Best Poster Award at the Princeton Day of Optimization.

During the summer of 2016, he worked as a research scientist intern at Amazon.com (Seattle) in the Supply Chain Optimization Technologies team. Using Machine-Learning techniques, he worked on predicting the fulfillment cost and developing a prototype to grant a fast and accurate access to future shipping cost estimates.

I am an Assistant Professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE), Georgia Institute of Technology since January 2022. I received my PhD from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, advised by Prof. Jian Peng. Prior to that, I received my bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Yao Class at Tsinghua University in 2016.

I am broadly interested in computational biology and machine learning, with a focus on developing AI and data science methods to reveals core scientific insights into biology and medicine. Recent interests include deep learning, transfer learning, sequence and graph representation learning, network and system biology, functional genomics, cancer genomics, drug repositioning and discovery, and AI-guided biological design and discovery.

My research focuses on engineering-driven machine learning methodologies for real-world problems in manufacturing and healthcare. The objective is to develop new models that combine learning methods with domain knowledge, in order to improve (i) efficiency, performance, and interpretability of the learning models; and (ii) productivity, scalability, and security of the engineering systems. 

Research areas: Additive Manufacturing, Bio-manufacturing, Healthcare, Machine Learning, Statistics.

Location:
Jialei Chen, Ph.D.
Department of Statistics, University of Georgia