Dr. Boukouvala is originally from Piraeus, which is the port of Athens in Greece. As the daughter of an airforce pilot, she travelled a lot with her family. Her first international move was actually to the USA, where she spent one year in Montgomery, Alabama. She later on lived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and Crete, Greece, before returning to Athens to get her B.S Degree in Chemical Engineering from the National Technical University in Athens. In 2008, she moved back to the US to obtain a PhD in Chemical Engineering at Rutgers University in NJ. She then worked as a Postdoctoral Associate in both Princeton University and Texas A&M University. In August 2016, Dr. Boukouvala returned to the South East US, as an Assistant Professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. 

Her research interest in Process Systems Engineering (PSE) started during her PhD years, where she worked under the supervision of Dr. Marianthi Ierapetritou, on modeling and optimization of continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing. Her background on optimization and data-driven modeling was enhanced during her years as a postdoc with the late Christodoulos A. Floudas. Dr. Boukouvala is a proud 4th generation member of the academic family tree of the father of PSE, Roger Sargent.

Julia Yang, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. Her research has enabled fundamental understanding of battery materials by advancing computational approaches to resolve transport in disordered electrodes and explain reactivity in organic electrolytes. She is a co-author on more than 14 publications and four patents, a recipient of the Harvard University Center for the Environment Fellowship (2022-2024), and a NextProf Nexus alum (2023). She is deeply committed to educating the next generation of diverse minds by prioritizing equity, inclusivity, and belonging, starting from within the classroom and beyond. 

Prof. Yang received her B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering, with an additional major in Physics, from Carnegie Mellon University and her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from U.C. Berkeley as an NDSEG Fellow under the guidance of Prof. Gerbrand Ceder. During her graduate studies, she was an AI Resident with X, the Moonshot Factory. She led postdoctoral work at Harvard University as an Environmental Fellow working with Prof. Boris Kozinsky and collaborating with Prof. Ah-Hyung Alissa Park.