Professor Soibelman obtained his bachelor and master’s degrees from UFRGS, Brazil. He worked as a construction manager for 10 years before obtaining his PhD in 1998 at MIT. He was a faculty in UIUC and CMU before he joined USC as the Chair of the CEE department in 2012. During the last 25 years he focused his research on advanced data acquisition, management, visualization, and mining for construction and operations of advanced infrastructure systems. He received the ASCE Computing in Civil Engineering Award, the FIATECH Outstanding Researcher Celebration of Engineering & Technology Innovation, or CETI, Award, the ASCE Richard R. Torrens Award, and the ASCE Construction Institute Construction Management award. He is an ASCE fellow, an ASCE Distinguished Member, a member of the National Academy of Construction and a member of the Pan American Academy of Engineering.

Joao P. Carneiro is a Civil Engineer born in Belem, the second largest city in the Brazilian Amazon Forest. During his master’s program, Joao was introduced to Building Information Modeling, and other concepts widely used by American contractors. At the same time, Joao was introduced to research by Dr. Becerik, Dr. Soibelman, and Dr. Heydarian, who was a Ph.D. student at the time. With this newfound love for research and technology, Joao decided to pursue his Ph.D. During his Ph.D. program at the University of Southern California, Joao focused on occupant lighting choices, data visualization, and virtual and augmented reality. After 3.5 years, Joao dropped out of his Ph.D. program to return to the construction industry. Joao was promptly hired to be one of the Los International Airport (LAX) Automated People Mover (APM) BIM coordinators. Joao is responsible for coordinating two stations, and all pedestrian bridges that connect the APM stations to the terminals. 

Geza Bottlik is the Director of the Masters of Engineering Management Program at USC. He is an Associate Professor of Engineering Practice in the department of Industrial and Systems Engineering where he has been teaching for the last 31 years. He has taught a variety of courses in Project and Engineering Management, Scheduling and Planning, Statistics and Supply Chain Design. His degrees, from Manhattan college and USC are in Mechanical Engineering. A few of his years of teaching overlap with his 34 years of experience in industry in computer hardware design, xerographic research, manufacturing and industrial engineering management as well as finance. 

Dr. Yolanda Gil is the Senior Director for Major Strategic AI and Data Science Initiatives USC's Information Sciences Institute (ISI). As Principal Scientist she leads the Interactive Knowledge Capture research group focusing on intelligent interfaces for knowledge capture. A recent focus is assisting scientists with intelligent systems that analyze data, test hypotheses, and make new discoveries. She is also a Research Professor in the Department of Computer Science and in the Spatial Sciences Institute at USC and Director of the Data Science Program at USC. She designed an innovative course for teaching data science to non-programmers. I am also Director of the USC Center for Knowledge-Powered Interdisciplinary Data Science (CKIDS). DataFest is a recurring, semester-long event at USC where students from different backgrounds and programs get hands-on experience in faculty-guided projects involving data science.

Priya Dharmala is a Software Engineer at Boeing, who recently graduated from USC with a Masters in Computer Science. During her time there, she served as the President of USC’s graduate data science organization, GRIDS (Graduates Rising in Informatics and Data Science), which supports graduate student interests in Data Science through research projects, workshops, and mentoring. Priya worked in the AI division at Information Sciences Institute (ISI) for a year to help create autonomous solutions to assist neuroscientists. Additionally, she has also worked on research in Natural Language Processing and Computational Social Science. Her interests include using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to solve real-world, interdisciplinary problems.

Vivek is a Senior Director at EY Parthenon within its Turnaround & Restructuring Strategy practice focusing on operational and cash improvements and has been with the firm for about 5 years based out of Irvine, CA. He has 10+ years of global management consulting and industry experience serving more than 30 companies in over a dozen sectors, including several large $10B+ large cap companies. Vivek’s diverse background includes operations turnaround, working capital, supply chain engineering, advanced analytics, transaction services and program management. Prior to EY, Vivek was a Manager at PwC Strategy& (formerly Booz & Company) and previously a Senior Associate with PwC’s PRTM Management Consulting practice. He holds a Master of Science, Engineering Management degree from USC Viterbi and a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from University of Mumbai, India.

Swathi is a Technical Business Analyst at Saviynt Inc. She graduated from USC Viterbi School of Engineering with a Masters in Engineering Management in May '20 with many accolades. Swathi has certifications in Supply Chain and Optimization, Business Analytics and a L.E.A.D certification. Swathi was the President of the Association of International Graduate Students at USC, along with the President of the Engineering Management Students Association. She was a resident assistant at Gradfam West, a Teaching Assistant and won the MIT MEMPC Design and Pitch competition. 

Prof. Clifford Neuman is Director of the USC Center for Computer Systems Security, a Scientist with USC's Information Sciences Institute, and faculty member in the Computer Science Department where he oversees USC's computer security curricula. Dr. Neuman received an S.B. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Upon completion he spent a year working for MIT’s Project Athena where he was a principal designer of the Kerberos authentication system, widely used today on all major computer systems for enterprise network login. Dr. Neuman completed graduate studies in the Computer Science Department of the University of Washington, receiving a Ph.D. in 1992.

Sridhar Jayanthi was the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of the transformational cyber security company PolyLogyx LLC. In May 2020, PolyLogyx was acquired by Netherlands-based EclecticIQ, where Sridhar will be driving the endpoint security business as Senior Vice President. Previously, Sridhar held global executive roles at FireEye and McAfee, responsible for establishing and managing product teams in United States, Europe and India. Sridhar has a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Madras and master’s degrees in Engineering from State University of New York and Northwestern University.

Candace House Teixeira is currently pursuing her Doctorate in Policy, Planning and Development at USC, researching engineering continuing education pathways at research institutions. She leads the development of executive and continuing education programs, outreach and marketing efforts for professionals seeking graduate engineering education, recruitment and conversion efforts for DEN@Viterbi (online) engineering programs and high school summer programs, and oversees the engineering career center. Teixeira has served on the USC Viterbi Industry Advisory Board, Corporate Council, and was a Lecturer for the Information Technology Program.

Michael C.K. Khoo received his undergraduate training in mechanical engineering from Imperial College, University of London. He obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in bioengineering from Harvard University. He is currently Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Pediatrics. He previously served as Department Chair of Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Khoo is a Fellow of the IEEE, Biomedical Engineering Society, the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering and the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering.  Dr. Khoo’s research focuses on disorders in cardiorespiratory control during sleep and their interactions with cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. 

Mr. Rinda Sama has more than 15 years of Class III medical device experience in various incremental roles. He currently works as a Chief Operating Officer at Axonics Modulation Technologies, a NASDAQ listed medical device company. Prior to Axonics, Mr. Sama was the Director of Operations and Quality at Vessix Vascular Inc which was acquired by Boston Scientific.  He worked as the Director of Program Management  and Site Lead at Boston Scientific. Mr. Sama holds a Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Southern California and an MBA from the University of California, Irvine.

Keith Chugg is a Professor and Associate Chair in the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and has been a member of the faculty since 1996. Prof. Chugg currently conducts research in the area of hardware acceleration of deep learning systems. He teaches graduate and undergraduate classes in the areas of Probability and Statistics, Signals and Systems, Digital Communications and Coding, and Deep Learning. He also has research interests in digital communications theory and signal processing. He is a co-founder of TrellisWare Technologies, a company in San Diego, CA employing over 250 people and a leading supplier of wireless technology to the US government and allied countries. He is an IEEE Fellow and was awarded the ASEE Frederick Emmons Terman Award in 2008  and Fred Ellersick Award for the outstanding unclassified paper at Milcom in 2003.

Petros A. Ioannou received his BSc degree from University College London and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, in 1978, 1980 and 1982, respectively. In 1982, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California where he is currently the A.V. ‘Bal’ Balakrishnan Chair Professor, the Director of the Center of Advanced Transportation Technologies and the Associate Director for Research of METRANS, a University Transportation Center. He also holds a courtesy appointment with the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Industrial Systems Engineering. He is the founder and director of the Master program on Financial Engineering at the University of Southern California. He is a Fellow of IEEE, IFAC, AAAS and IET and the author/co-author of 8 books and over 400 research papers.

Ashwin Rao is Vice-President of Artificial Intelligence at Target Corporation where he and his team work on problems involving Demand Forecasting, Supply-Chain Optimization, Dynamic Pricing, Recommendation Systems, Search, and Marketing Science. Ashwin is also Adjunct Faculty in Applied Mathematics at Stanford University, leading Stanford's Mathematical and Computational Finance Program. Previously, Ashwin had a 14-year-long career on Wall Street - he was a Trading Strategist at Goldman Sachs in the area of Interest Rate and Mortgage Derivatives, and was subsequently a Managing Director of Market Modeling at Morgan Stanley. Ashwin's current research and teaching is in AI for Adaptive Decisioning under Uncertainty, with focus on Reinforcement Learning algorithms. Ashwin holds a B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT-Bombay and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from USC, where his thesis was in the field of Algorithmic Abstract Algebra.

Sandeep Gupta received his B. Tech. degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, in 1985, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA, in 1989 and 1991, respectively. He is a Professor at the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA. At the University of Southern California, he has served in various roles, including as the President of Academic Senate and the Chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department – Systems.

His current research interests include design, test, validation of digital hardware, especially emerging technologies, and software.

Bivraj Koradia has over 12 years of experience in the Hi-Tech Semiconductor Industry. He is currently Physical Design Lead in the ARM Server Processor Group at Marvell Semiconductor in Santa Clara, California. In the past Bivraj has worked in various domains of VLSI like Verification, Post-Silicon Test Engineering and Validation, Circuit Design, Physical Design at companies in India and the United States. He is constantly striving to connect Academia and Industry and has delivered several lectures in topics related to VLSI and Semiconductor Industry trends.

Michael Zyda is the Founding Director of USC's Computer Science Games Program, and a Professor of Engineering Practice in the USC Department of Computer Science. At USC, he founded the Computer Science Games Program and the year-long advanced game projects course that forms the core of USC Games and took that program from no program to the #1 Games program in the world. That program has been rated #1 by the Princeton Review for ten of the last eleven years. His alums have shipped games played by over 5 billion players, about $250B in revenue and $2.5B in payroll to those alums. 

Bharathwaj "Bat" Nandakumar is a veteran game developer with over a decade of experience working in the trenches on a wide range of high profile AAA video games. He currently leads Technical Engineering at Retro Studios, a subsidiary of Nintendo based in Austin, Texas. Prior to joining Retro Studios, he led Data Instrumentation and Analytics as well as the PC Platform for Black Ops 4. He has been actively involved in new R&D initiatives for online, user centric and cutting edge features such as Theater Mode (a replay system for movie making) and CoDCaster (an e-sports focussed shoutcaster system) for the Call of Duty franchise. Outside of video game development, Bharathwaj also serves as an advisor for a couple of tech start-ups and is the founder of a non-profit initiative that works to provide solutions for social issues.