Suresh Marru is a research professor dedicated to advancing science and engineering through AI and cyberinfrastructure. Over the past two decades, he has focused on accelerating and democratizing computational science. His work includes the development of science gateways and the pioneering of the Apache Airavata distributed systems framework.

In his current role as the Director of Georgia Tech's ARTISAN Center, his team is at the forefront of pioneering efforts to integrate AI into diverse scientific domains. His group is dedicated to bridging the gap between theory, experimentation, and computation by fostering open-source integration frameworks. These frameworks automate research processes, optimize complex models, and integrate disparate scientific data with simulation engines.

Collaboration is at the heart of Suresh’s ethos. He has had the privilege of working alongside brilliant scientists and technologists, contributing to groundbreaking research in domains such as geosciences, neuroscience, and molecular dynamics. These collaborations have not only accelerated scientific discovery but have also offered valuable insights into the potential of AI in scientific innovation.

Beyond his professional endeavors, Suresh is deeply passionate about open science and open-source software. He also believes in building synergies between academia and industry. He has played an instrumental role in a series of tech startups. Currently, he serves as the Chief Technology Officer at Folia, a company dedicated to unleashing the power of annotations.

Alexander Lerch is an Associate Professor at the School of Music, Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his "Diplom-Ingenieur'' (EE) and his PhD (Audio Communications) from Technical University Berlin. Lerch joined Georgia Tech in 2013 and teaches classes on music signal processing, computational music analysis, audio technology, and audio software engineering. Before he joined Georgia Tech, Lerch was Head of Research at his company zplane.development, an industry leader in music technology licensing. zplane technology includes algorithms such as time-stretching and automatic key detection and is used by millions of musicians and producers world-wide.       

Lerch's research focuses on teaching computers to listen to and comprehend music. His research field, Music Information Retrieval (MIR), positions him at the intersection of signal processing, machine learning, music psychology, and systematic musicology. His Music Informatics Group (http://www.musicinformatics.gatech.edu) creates artificially intelligent software for music generation, production, and consumption and generates new insights into music and its performance.

Lerch authored more than 40 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. His text book "An Introduction to Audio Content Analysis" (IEEE/Wiley 2012) and the accompanying online materials at www.AudioContentAnalysis.org helped define educational practice in the field.

Irfan Essa is a Professor in the School of Interactive Computing and Senior Associate Dean in the College of Computing (CoC), at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Professor Essa works in the areas of Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics, Computer Graphics, and Social Computing, with potential impact on Content Creation, Analysis and Production (e.g., Computational Photography & Video, Image-based Modeling and Rendering, etc.) Human Computer Interaction, Artificial Intelligence, Computational Behavioral/Social Sciences, and Computational Journalism research.He has published over 150 scholarly articles in leading journals and conference venues on these topics and several of his papers have also won best paper awards. He has been awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and was elected an IEEE Fellow. He has held extended research consulting positions with Disney Research and Google Research and also was an Adjunct Faculty Member at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute. He joined Georgia Tech in 1996 after his earning his Master's (1990), Ph.D. (1994), and holding a research faculty position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab (1988-1996).