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.

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.

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.

Thomas Ploetz is a computer scientist with expertise and almost 15 years of experience in Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning research (Ph.D. from Bielefeld University, Germany). His research agenda focuses on applied machine learning that is developing systems and innovative sensor data analysis methods for real world applications. Primary application domain for his work is computational behavior analysis, in which he develops methods for automated and objective behavior assessments in naturalistic environments.