Alex Dimakis

EECS Professor | University of California, Berkeley 

Alex Dimakis is a Professor in UC Berkeley in the EECS department. He received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and the Diploma degree from NTU in Athens, Greece. He has published more than 150 papers and received several awards including the James Massey Award, NSF Career, a Google research award, the UC Berkeley Eli Jury dissertation award, and several best paper awards. He served as an Associate Editor for several journals, as an Area Chair for major Machine Learning conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, AAAI) and as the chair of the Technical Committee for MLSys 2021. He is an IEEE Fellow for contributions to distributed coding and learning. His research interests include Generative AI, Information Theory and Machine Learning. 

Alex is a founding member and research thrust leader at the NSF AI Institute for Foundations of Machine Learning (NSF IFML) and the co-founder and Chief Scientist at Bespoke Labs AI, focused on creating AI tools for data curation and post-training LLMs.

Robert Grey

Director of Sustainable Future | Plug and Play Tech Center

Robert Grey is the Director of Sustainable Future, overseeing five business units at the Plug and Play Tech Center: Agtech, Animal Health, Food & Beverage, New Materials & Packaging, and Sustainability. Over the course of his career, he has tackled large-scale challenges in human health, water efficiency, agricultural productivity, and ecosystem resilience, gaining a deep understanding of corporate innovation through cross-border business development.

Plug and Play is one of the most active investors and startup accelerators in the world, and the leading open innovation platform working with more than 600 corporate partners and 100 university partners. It is particularly distinguished by regular university engagement to help bridge the gap between research and translation.

Manikya Swathi Vallabhajosyula

PhD Candidate and Graduate Research Assistant | The Ohio State University

Manikya is a PhD candidate and Graduate Research Assistant at The Ohio State University, specializing in AI-driven resource provisioning for High-Performance Computing (HPC). Her research is central to developing modern AI-driven cyberinfrastructure (CI) middleware tools, including resource estimators and intelligent schedulers that interact with monitoring and metadata systems.

She works with the NSF AI Institute for Intelligent Cyberinfrastructure with Computational Learning in the Environment (NSF ICICLE), which is advancing the next generation of cyberinfrastructure to make AI more accessible and widely adopted. Within ICICLE’s middleware and tools group, she collaborates with cyberinfrastructure researchers to design software stacks that integrate directly with core infrastructure. Her contributions include the AI-Aware Adaptive Scheduler, which leverages backend estimators (e.g., memory and wall-time predictors, CI-centric queue wait-time estimators) and integrates with systems such as the Cyberinfrastructure Knowledge Network (CKN) for runtime monitoring and Patra Model Cards for efficient model metadata management. Together, these efforts form an integrated ecosystem designed to streamline AI deployment and optimize resource utilization for scientific applications.

Dr. Irina Dolinskaya

Directorate Head for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) | U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)

Dr. Irina Dolinskaya is Directorate Head for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Prior to becoming a Directorate Head, she was a Deputy Division Director in the Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF) division. Before that, Dr. Dolinskaya was a Program Director in the Division of Civil, Mechanical & Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI) in the Directorate for Engineering (ENG). Dr. Dolinskaya managed Dynamics, Control and Systems Diagnostics (DCSD) and Foundational Research in Robotics (FRR) programs, as well as National Robotics Initiative (NRI 3.0) and Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) NSF's 10 Big Ideas. Prior to joining NSF, Dr. Dolinskaya was a faculty in the Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences department at Northwestern University. She obtained M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan, and B.S. degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Florida.

Dr. Irina Dolinskaya's research is in the field of transportation science and logistics with focus on adaptive modeling and solution approaches to integrate dynamic real-time information. Her primary applications were in humanitarian logistics, optimal vessel performance, and electric vehicle routing.

Brian Stone

NSF Chief of Staff, Performing the duties of the NSF Director | U.S. National Science Foundation

Brian W. Stone is currently performing the duties of the Director of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). In this capacity, he provides executive leadership for the agency, overseeing strategic direction, budget execution and the advancement of NSF's mission to support fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. He serves as NSF's principal representative to the White House, Congress, other federal agencies, and domestic and international partners, guiding policy and institutional priorities at the highest level.

In addition to this role, Mr. Stone serves as the Chief of Staff of NSF. He leads cross-directorate coordination, long-range planning and high-level policy development, while advising the Director and senior leadership on emerging issues and strategic opportunities across the agency's portfolio.

Mr. Stone previously served in the NSF Office of Polar Programs as the Section Head for Antarctic Infrastructure and Logistics and as a Research Support Manager. He was responsible for the full scope of operational logistics for the United States Antarctic Program (USAP), managing a $260 million annual budget and overseeing coordination with the U.S. Department of Defense, NOAA, NASA and numerous federal and international partners. He also led the administration of multiple major contracts, including NSF's largest award for the operation and maintenance of USAP infrastructure.

Prior to joining the federal government, Mr. Stone worked in operations and logistics for the USAP prime support contractor. He has more than 25 years of experience in polar operations and remote-site logistics and has worked at all major USAP locations, including a multiyear assignment managing operations in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Over the course of his career, Mr. Stone has received numerous honors and awards and is a recipient of both the NSF Distinguished Service Award and the Presidential Rank Award. His long-term contributions to Antarctic service were also recognized by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, which named a geographic feature in Antarctica in his honor.
Mr. Stone holds Bachelor of Arts degrees in Biology and Political Science from Duke University and a Master of Business Administration from The George Washington University.

Ellen Zegura

Acting Assistant Director of the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate | U.S. National Science Foundation

Dr. Ellen Zegura is Regents and Fleming Chair Professor in the School of Computer Science at Georgia Tech. Starting from August 2023, she is on loan from Georgia Tech to the National Science Foundation serving initially as Division Director for Computer and Network Systems (CNS) and now as Acting Assistant Director for the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate. Her research interests lie in computer networking, with an emphasis on mobile and wireless networks, and on ethics education in undergraduate computer science. She is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the ACM.

Katie Antypas

Director of the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) | U.S. National Science Foundation

Katie is the Director of the NSF's Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure which is responsible for supporting and coordinating the development and deployment of advanced computing and data research infrastructure, tools, services, and training for the research and education community. Prior to joining NSF Katie was at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for 17 years in a variety of roles including NERSC Division Deputy, Project Director for NERSC's large scale High Performance Computing system acquisitions, Director of Hardware and Integration of the Exascale Computing Project, Data Department Head and User Services Group Lead. Before coming to NERSC in 2006, Katie worked at the Flash Center at the University of Chicago on the FLASH code, a highly scalable, parallel, adaptive mesh refinement astrophysics application. She has an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Chicago and a bachelors in Physics from Wellesley College.