Dr. Roberto Perdisci is the Patty and D.R. Grimes Distinguished Professor of Computer Science in the School of Computing at the University of Georgia, where he also serves as Director of the Institute for Cybersecurity and Privacy. He holds additional appointments as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Georgia Tech School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and as a faculty member of the UGA Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Prior to joining UGA, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology, following doctoral work at the University of Cagliari, Italy.

His research focuses on securing networked systems, with interests in web security, malware detection, and the automation of security incident analysis. His work often integrates systems research with machine learning and large-scale data mining to address challenges in computer and network security. Dr. Perdisci has been recognized with several awards, including an NSF CAREER Award, the UGA Fred C. Davison Early Career Scholar Award, and the M. G. Michael Award for Excellence in Research.

Dr. Ping Ma is a Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Georgia. He received his Ph.D. in Statistics from Purdue University and completed postdoctoral research at Harvard University’s Bauer Center for Genomics Research.

Dr. Ma’s research develops advanced statistical theories and methodologies for analyzing large and complex datasets to address scientific and engineering challenges with broad societal impact. His work spans big data analytics, bioinformatics, functional data analysis, and geophysics. As head of the Ma Lab, he leads interdisciplinary efforts that integrate statistical innovation with real-world problem solving, contributing to the advancement of data-driven discovery across multiple domains.

Dr. Tianming Liu is a Distinguished Research Professor (since 2017) and a Full Professor of Computer Science (since 2015) at UGA. Dr. Liu is also an affiliated faculty (by courtesy) with UGA Bioimaging Research Center (BIRC), UGA Institute of Bioinformatics (IOB), UGA Neuroscience PhD Program, and UGA Institute of Artificial Intelligence (IAI). Before he moved to UGA in 2008, Dr. Liu was a faculty member of Weill Medical College of Cornell University (Assistant Professor, 2007-2008) and Harvard Medical School (Instructor, 2005-2007). Dr. Liu was a postdoc in neuroimaging at the University of Pennsylvania (2002-2004) and Harvard Medical School (2004-2005). 

I am an associate professor in the computer science department at the University of Georgia. Before joining UGA, I was a postdoctoral research associate working in Prof. Daniel Kifer's machine learning lab at PennState University. I received my Ph.D. in computer science in 2014 from Purdue University, where I studied privacy-preserving data analysis techniques under the supervision of Prof. Chris Clifton. Before joining Purdue, I was a member of the database group at Yonsei university where I obtained my master's and bachelor's degrees in Computer Science. During my master's study, I did research on developing efficient stream mining algorithms for high-dimensional data streams under the supervision of Prof. Won Suk Lee.

Elena Karahanna is the C. Herman and Mary Virginia Terry Distinguished Chair in Business Administration and a University of Georgia Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Management Information Systems at the Terry College of Business. She holds a Ph.D. in Management Information Systems from the University of Minnesota and both B.S. (summa cum laude) and MBA degrees from Lehigh University. Dr. Karahanna’s research examines how information systems influence the way individuals work, communicate, coordinate, and make decisions. Her current scholarship focuses on responsible AI, conversational agents, social bots, and health IT. Her work has appeared in leading journals across information systems, management, and marketing and has been recognized with multiple best paper awards.

A Fellow of both the Association for Information Systems and INFORMS Information Systems Society, Dr. Karahanna is widely recognized for her contributions to research, teaching, and service in the field. She has received numerous honors, including the AIS LEO Award for lifetime achievement and the Terry College Distinguished Research Award. Her editorial leadership includes serving as Senior Editor and Associate Editor for top journals such as MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, and Management Science. Dr. Karahanna also plays an active role in shaping the global information systems community, having co-chaired major conferences and founded professional initiatives to support scholars and students in the discipline.

Dr. Jennifer L. Gay is an Associate Professor in the College of Public Health at the University of Georgia, with affiliations in Health Promotion & Behavior and the Institute of Gerontology. She also holds appointments as an adjunct professor in Kinesiology and is a faculty member of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Her research examines the reciprocal relationship between human and environmental health, focusing on how physical activity participation can promote pro-environmental behaviors.

Dr. Gay directs the PACE (Physical Activity & Community Environment) Lab, where she studies how built and social environments shape physical activity across the lifespan. Her work emphasizes occupational physical activity, measurement and methodological advances in activity research, and program evaluation. A dedicated educator, she values mentoring students and fostering their understanding of community health, research design, and applied behavioral science. Her scholarship and teaching together reflect a commitment to advancing public health through evidence-based, contextually grounded research.

Prof. Doshi's research interests broadly fall in AI and Robotics. In the area of AI, he is an expert on autonomous decision making with specific interests in decision making under uncertainty in multiagent settings. In robotics, Prof. Doshi investigates ways to make learning by observing pragmatic for robots and is an expert on inverse reinforcement learning. He also studies methods for SLAM in occluded, multi-robot settings. His past research experience also includes the semantic Web and specifically in ontology alignment and learning; and in services-oriented computing, specifically in composing Web services and adapting the compositions.

In collaboration with Prof. Piotr Gmytrasiewicz at UIC, Prof. Doshi co-pioneered the Interactive POMDP (I-POMDP) framework, which complements the predominant focus of previous multiagent research on team decision making. I-POMDP departs from several traditional game-theoretic solution concepts (such as equilibria) and its subjective perspective permits a natural consideration of issues related to interactive epistemology (nested modeling) and computability (finite nesting) in decision making. I-POMDPs are now well recognized within the multiagent community as a leading framework for decision making in complex, general settings. Recent use cases of I-POMDPs by researchers testify to its significance and growing appeal. They are being used to explore strategies for countering money laundering by terrorists, enhanced to include trust levels for facilitating defense simulations, and building empirical models for simulating human behavior pertaining to strategic thought and action. Survey articles published by Prof. Doshi in the AI Magazine and the AI Journal offer easy readings for a contextual understanding of this framework. THINC Lab also maintains a one-stop repository of all papers related to the I-POMDP framework. In 2011, Prof. Doshi received UGA's Creative Research Medal for his work related to I-POMDPs, which acknowledges exceptional achievements in creativity and research by UGA faculty.

Prof. Doshi would like to see robots learn tasks simply by observing others perform them. Toward this ambitious goal, his research investigations focus on generalizing inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) to operate in contexts involving noisy sensor models and where portions of the observed task may be occluded from view. A recent survey article published by him and his doctoral student offers an informative review and comparison of various IRL methods and their extensions. This research is being evaluated by teaching collaborative robotic manipulators on a produce processing line to accurately sort onions.

Prof. Doshi is the recipient of the 2009 NSF CAREER award for his research on multiagent decision making. His sustained research excellence has earned him the Outstanding Faculty Research award from the CS department three times (2009, 2012, and 2018). He has published extensively in journals, conferences, and other forums in the fields of agents, AI, Robotics, Semantic Web, and Web services with over 150 archival publications. He has given numerous presentations in conferences and invited talks at research institutions and universities. His papers are available from this website's publication page or from his Google Scholar profile. He currently serves on the editorial board of Springer's Journal of AAMAS as a coordinating editor and as the area chair in various AI conferences.

Receiving UGA's 2025 Entrepreneur of the Year Award is a tremendous honor for Prof. Doshi. He is passionate about translating research, particularly in human-robot collaboration, into tangible applications. This award celebrates the work of his co-founded company, InversAI, which is currently seeking to commercialize AI-powered collaborative robots engaged in pick, inspect, and place for agricultural processing. The cobots are being tested in Georgia's onion sheds, streamlining operations. He finds it incredibly rewarding to see university-based innovation successfully bridge the gap to operational, real-world technology.

Suchendra M. Bhandarkar is a Professor in the School of Computing. His research focuses on computer vision, pattern recognition, image processing, artificial intelligence, computational intelligence, parallel processing, and computational biology. His contributions span core algorithmic areas and applied computational methods across these domains.

Bhandarkar earned a Ph.D. (1989) and an M.S. (1985) in Computer Engineering from Syracuse University, and a B.S. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (1983). His academic training and research breadth reflect longstanding engagement with foundational and interdisciplinary problems in computing.

Author of four books published by Academic Press, Mapping Human and Natural Systems, Forest Management and Planning, Introduction to Forestry and Natural Resources, and Forest Plans of North America, Pete Bettinger is Hargreaves Distinguished Professor of Forest Management at the University of Georgia. He was honored with the Carl Alwin Schenck award for outstanding performance in the field of forestry education by the Society of American Foresters in 2020.

Dr. Bettinger is Coordinator for IUFRO Division 4.04.00 (Forest management planning). He is a member of the editorial boards of Forest Science, Forests, Journal of Sustainable Forestry, Journal of Forest Planning, European Journal of Forest Engineering, and Mathematical and Computational Forestry & Natural-Resource Sciences. In 2009, he was presented the Award of Excellence for Research and Development by the Southeastern Division of the Society of American Foresters. In 2016, he was presented the Creative Research Medal by the University of Georgia. In 2018, he was selected as a Fellow in the Society of American Foresters.

Dr. Bettinger teaches courses on Forest Planning, Forest Measurements, Introduction to Forestry, and Aerial Photogrammetry. He conducts research in applied forest management with particular emphasis on harvest scheduling, landscape planning, precision forestry, and geospatial technologies. Dr. Bettinger received Bachelors and Masters degrees in forestry from Virginia Tech, and a PhD in forest resources from Oregon State University.

Dr. Bettinger worked for the forest industry in the southern and western United States, and maintains this connection to forestry professionals through his leadership in the Southern Forestry and Natural Resource Management GIS Conference and other continuing education courses he offers. Thus far in his career, Dr. Bettinger has published over 140 peer-reviewed journal articles.

Dr. Arpinar is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Georgia and a member of the Large Scale Distributed Information Systems (LSDIS) Lab. He earned his BSc, MSc, and PhD degrees in Computer Engineering from the Middle East Technical University. His research has long focused on advancing the capabilities of information systems, with contributions spanning semantic web technologies, information fusion, and collective intelligence. He has also played a key role in developing adaptable workflow technologies and semantic-based methods for improved information integration and search experiences on the web.

Dr. Arpinar’s work encompasses a broad range of interconnected fields including human brain–inspired AI, neuro-symbolic computing, semantic web and knowledge graphs, and social computing. His research has been supported by organizations such as the National Science Foundation and the University of Georgia Research Foundation, resulting in over seventy publications and several research prototypes and products.