Dr. Duarte is excited to join the Department of Psychology at U.T. Austin starting in Fall, 2021 after 13 years as a professor at The Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Duarte received her Ph.D. in Neurobiology from U.C. Berkeley in 2004 and conducted her postdoctoral work in cognitive neuroscience at the Medical Research Council in Cambridge, UK. Dr. Duarte is a cognitive neuroscientist who uses multiple, complementary neuroscience methods including electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and neuropsychological methods (i.e. neurological patients), to understand the neural mechanisms of age-related changes in episodic memory, which is memory for personally experienced events. The major aim of her research program is to understand the neural changes that underlie age-related decline in episodic memory, why some people age better, from a neural and cognitive perspective, than others, and to develop and implement effective interventions to alleviate this decline. She has longstanding and active interdisciplinary collaborations with neurologists, neuropsychologists, and sleep disorder clinicians, and with mechanical engineers, to investigate experimental manipulations that may ameliorate episodic memory impairments in people with Alzheimer’s disease pathology, and to explore sleep-related biomarkers of Alzheimer’s pathology. She has a particular interest in the cognitive neuroscience of aging in racial/ethnic minorities and the psychosocial factors like race-related stress, depression, and acculturation that influence memory and underlying brain function in diverse populations. Her lab's work has been featured in the Huffington Post, Science Daily, and Ozy. 

Dr. Janet Murray is a Professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, as well as Director of the Digital Integrative Liberal Arts Center (http://dilac.iac.gatech.edu). She received her PhD in English from Harvard. Her primary research interests are interactive design, interactive narrative, and the history and development of representational media. Her widely known book, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, asks whether we can expect this new medium to support a new expressive art form, comparable to the Shakespearean theater or the Victorian novel in its ability to move and enlighten us. She is mostly optimistic about this possibility. Her textbook, Inventing the Medium: Principles of Interaction Design as a Cultural Practice (MIT Press, 2011) unites the myriad traditional disciplines in which interactive designers are now trained into a single coherent digitally focused design vocabulary. Her Prototyping eNarrative group (PENlab) creates prototypes of emerging narrative structures including interactive television, story-games, and virtual/augmented reality (http://penlab.gatech.edu). She is an emerita member of the Board of Trustees of the American Film Institute and the Board of the Peabody Awards, an Inaugural Fellow of the Higher Education Video Game Alliance, and a frequent keynote speaker for conferences at the intersection of games and narrative.

Ruth Kanfer is a psychologist and professor at Georgia Institute of Technology in the area of Industrial and Organizational Psychology. She is best known for her research in the fields of motivation, goal setting, self-regulation, job search, adult learning, and future of work. Kanfer has received numerous awards for her research contributions including the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution in Applied Research in 1989, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) William R. Owens Scholarly Achievement Award in 2006 and the SIOP Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award in 2007. Ruth Kanfer has authored influential papers on a variety of topics including the interaction of cognitive abilities and motivation on performance, the influence of personality and motivation on job search and employment, and a review chapter on motivation in an organizational setting.

Dr. Jianjun Shi is the Carolyn J. Stewart Chair and Professor in H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, with joint appointment in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to joining Georgia Tech in 2008, he was the G. Lawton and Louise G. Johnson Professor of Engineering at the University of Michigan. He received his B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Beijing Institute of Technology in 1984 and 1987, and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1992. Dr. Shi is a pioneer in the development and application of data fusion for quality improvements. His methodologies integrate system informatics, advanced statistics, and control theory for the design and operational improvements of manufacturing and service systems by fusing engineering systems models with data science methods. He has produced 40 Ph.D. graduates, 27 of which have joined IE department as faculty members. Among them, 7 have received NSF CAREER Awards and one has received the NSF PECASE award. He has published one book and more than 180 papers. He has served as PI and co-PI for projects totaling more than 25 million dollars, which were funded by National Science Foundation, NIST Advanced Technology Program, Department of Energy, General Motors, Daimler-Chrysler, Ford, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Honeywell, Pfizer, Samsung, and various other industrial companies and funding agencies. The technologies developed in Dr. Shi’s research group have been widely implemented in various production systems with significant economic impacts. 

Dr. Shi is the founding chair of the Quality, Statistics and Reliability (QSR) Subdivision at the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS). He has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the IISE Transactions (2017-2020), the flagship journal of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers. He also served as the Focus Issue Editor of IISE Transactions on Quality and Reliability Engineering (2007-2017), editor of Journal of System Science and Complexity, and advisory editor of Journal of Quality Technology and Quantitative Management (QTQM). He is a Fellow of American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME), a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering (IISE), a Fellow of Institute of Operations Research and the Management Science (INFORMS), a Fellow of Society of Manufacturing Engineering (SME), an Academician of the International Academy for Quality, and a member of National Academy of Engineering (NAE) of the USA. 

Dr. Shi received various awards for his research and teaching, including the George Box Medal (2022), ASQ Walter Shewhart Medal (2021), The S. M. Wu Research Implementation Award (2021), ASQ Brumbaugh Award (2019), The Horace Pops Medal Award (2018), IISE David F. Baker Distinguished Research Award (2016), the IIE Albert G. Holzman Distinguished Educator Award (2011), Forging Achievement Award from Forging Industry Educational and Research Foundation (2007), Monroe-Brown Foundation Research Excellence Award (2007), the 1938E Award (1998) at The University of Michigan, and NSF CAREER Award (1996).