Saleh is a Senior Research Program Coordinator for the UT-NSF Ethical AI Program at UT. Saleh’s work involves managing UT-NSF Ethical AI program and researching AI applications in different domains.

Louis G. Alcorn is an Assistant Vice President in the Funding & Financing Strategy group at WSP USA. Since 2024 he has also served as the manager of the Advisory & Planning Management Consulting Associates Program guiding 10-20 junior staff through a 1- to 3-year rotation through various practice areas within the company’s management consulting sector. He is a self-described plangineer, combining quantitative and qualitative skillsets from both the transport planning and engineering fields. Louis holds master’s degrees in both community & regional planning and transportation engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Mr. Alcorn has several years of public-sector agency experience both capital finance and transit planning at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) and Capital Metro in Austin, respectively. In his previous professional experience, he focused on finding creative solutions to enhance coordination efforts across departmental/agency lines through the establishment of partnerships and working groups.

Now, at WSP, Mr. Alcorn enjoys addressing the challenges of strategic planning for the future infrastructure of the world. He spends at least half of his time serving as the deputy project manager for the multibillion-dollar Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) program megaproject that will provide an improved multimodal connection between Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington. Outside of daily functions at WSP, Mr. Alcorn also founded of the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Technical Committee on Mobility on Demand and as a Service, which fuels his interest in innovative mobility strategies to address climate change and equity goals.

Chris Bischak, AICP is a planner and data analyst with the Northeast Corridor Commission where he works on passenger rail infrastructure projects. Previously he was a transportation analyst with Noblis where he worked on a variety of contracts for the US Department of Transportation with a focus on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and emerging transportation technologies.

His professional interests include public transit, high speed rail, micromobility, and climate resiliency. He has a B.A. in Environmental Science from the University of Virginia, M.S. in City and Regional Planning from the University of Texas at Austin, and a graduate certificate in Systems Engineering from CalTech.

Ioannis A. Kakadiaris has a long and distinguished track record in AI for Social Good. CBL’s research has been supported by federal (NSF, NIH, Army Research Labs, DHS, and National Institute of Justice), state (Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board), industry (SGI, American Honda, Microsoft Research, Unisys, Siemens Medical Solutions, and BP America), foundations (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and Schlumberger Technical Foundation), and international funding organizations (French Partner University Fund). Ioannis’ research has been featured on Discovery Channel, National Public Radio, KPRC NBC News, KTRH ABC News, and KHOU CBS News. He was a recipient of the UH Computer Science Research Excellence Award two times. He has been recognized for his research with several distinguished honors, including the NSF Early Career Development Award, the Schlumberger Technical Foundation Award, the UH Teaching Excellence Award, and the James Muller Vulnerable Plaque Young Investigator Prize. He has served as the VP of Technical Activities at the IEEE Biometrics Council, Program Co-Chair for BTAS 2019, General Co-Chair for IJCB 2020, and a graduate of the NSF iCORPs program.

Mr. Edgar Kraus is a Research Engineer at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) Utility Engineering Program and has been with TTI since 2001. He received a Master of Science degree in Civil & Environmental Engineering from the University of Rhode Island with an emphasis on transportation engineering. He also holds a Master of Science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Braunschweig, Germany. Mr. Kraus is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Texas, an affiliate of the Transportation Research Board, a member of the Institute for Transportation Engineers, and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Ryun Jung (RJ) Lee is an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Texas at San Antonio and a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP). At UTSA, she serves as Graduate Program Committee Chair and leads the GeoDesign and Planning for Sustainable and Resilient Communities Lab. Her research explores how the built environment and green infrastructure can mitigate disaster impacts and improve quality of life, with a strong focus on community resilience and environmental justice. She uses geospatial analysis and statistical methods to examine spatial inequalities and support data-informed planning. Dr. Lee also actively engages in community-based research and service-learning, connecting students with local partners to address real world challenges through equitable design and planning strategies. She holds a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Sciences from Texas A&M University and has published on climate adaptation, green infrastructure, urban vacancies, and community wellbeing.

Clinton J. Andrews directs the Center for Urban Policy Research at Rutgers University where he is a Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning. He was educated at Brown and MIT in engineering and planning, and he worked previously in the private sector and at Princeton University. He performs research on how people use and adapt to changes in the built environment. This includes climate change mitigation and adaptation, and how technological changes affect urban life. He has current projects on urban robotics, micromobility, the energy transition, coastal hazards, and urban heat stress. His books include Humble Analysis: The Practice of Joint Fact-finding, Regulating Regional Power Systems, and Industrial Ecology and Global Change. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners and a licensed Professional Engineer. Andrews is a Fellow of AAAS, and a winner of IEEE’s 3rd Millenium Medal.

Kijin Seong is a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin, where she leads and contributes to research projects focused on urban data science and climate resilience, including AI-driven solutions for heat vulnerability and EMS response strategies.

Her ongoing research bridges urban planning, environmental justice, and climate resilience with cutting-edge data science and AI technologies to address pressing challenges in urban areas. Focusing on smart city resilience, Dr. Seong’s research investigates how environmental health, climate change adaptation, and urban data science intersect to improve public safety and disaster response in communities.

Dr. Seong holds a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Sciences from Texas A&M University, and she is an American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) certified professional. Her work has been published in academic journals such as Sustainable Cities and Society, Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, and the Journal of Planning Literature, and presented at both national and international conferences.

Dominik is the Director for Smart Cities at Esri in Redlands, CA, Investor, Digital Shaper, Author, and Board Member. Previously, he was a co-founder of Procedural, the maker of CityEngine (acquired by Esri) and collaborates with cities worldwide to drive  sustainable and forward-thinking initiatives.

Armando Ulises Santos Cruz is a PhD student and graduate research assistant in Civil Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, working in the Coastal Hazards Lab under Dr. Jun-Whan Lee. He leads the development of a coastal flood modeling framework designed to support digital twin systems through rapid, high-resolution flood mapping. His work focuses on accurate coastal flood mapping and enabling real-time updates based on water level sensor data. Armando’s broader research interests include coastal hazard modeling in the context of sea level rise, land cover change, and urban vulnerability. His work supports resilient infrastructure and adaptive planning in climate-sensitive urban environments by combining geospatial data and data science with AI-driven methods.

Deepak Upadyaya is a co-founder CTO at Moii, a next-generation data company focused on collecting and algorithmizing real-world data with a goal of positively impacting communities.

Deepak has an MBA from the Eli Broad School of Business at Michigan State University an Analytics degree from Oakland University and a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical  Engineering. Deepak’s interests outside of AI and tech include running, hiking and meditation and a strong belief in balanced living. He lives with his wife and two children in Helsinki and splits time between Finland and Michigan.

Qisheng Pan is a Professor in the Department of Public Affairs and Planning within the College of Architecture, Planning, and Public Affairs (CAPPA) at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), where he also serves as Director of the Center for Transportation, Equity, Decisions, and Dollars (CTEDD). Prior to UTA, he was a Full Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy (UPEP) at Texas Southern University (TSU) from 2011 to 2020 and served as Chair of the UPEP department from 2008 to 2016. Dr. Pan earned his Ph.D. in Urban Planning and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Southern California (USC). His research spans several key areas of urban planning, including transportation planning, economic impact analysis, and geographic information systems (GIS) applications. He has led research projects funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), including work on megaregion transportation planning models. His projects funded by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) have focused on measuring access to public transit services and analyzing port-related traffic and emissions. Dr. Pan has also worked on transportation equity and the economic impacts of terrorist attacks and natural disasters. Additionally, he has contributed his expertise to projects supported by the National Science Foundation’s Digital Government Program, the Department of Homeland Security, the California Cut Flower Commission, Renovate America, the March Joint Powers Authority, and the RAND Corporation.

Yiming Xu is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his B.E. and M.E. degrees in transportation engineering from Tongji University, China in 2016 and 2019, and his Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Florida in 2023. His research is dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for improving transportation systems. He specializes in leveraging data-driven approaches, including trustworthy machine learning and deep learning techniques, to analyze travel behavior and support urban mobility management and operation.

Dr. Xinyue Ye is the Harold Adams Endowed Professor in Urban Informatics and a Stellar Faculty Provost Target Hire at Texas A&M University (TAMU), where he also serves as Faculty Fellow for Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships in the Division of Research. His interdisciplinary research integrates computational social science, urban data science, and GeoAI to tackle challenges in infrastructure resilience, extreme weather, urban revitalization, and community engagement. Supported by 13 federal agencies and multiple industry partners, his work bridges technology, policy, and human behavior to shape more sustainable and livable cities. His current focus includes urban digital twins, precision public health, and real-time AI-driven planning, alongside research on weather extremes and their impacts on mobility and the built environment. Dr. Ye is an Elected Fellow of the American Association of Geographers and has received the AAG Distinguished Scholar Award. At TAMU, he is a Chancellor EDGES Fellow and recipient of the Thomas Regan Interdisciplinary Prize. He directs the Board of Regents-approved Center for Geospatial Sciences, Applications, and Technology (GeoSAT), which advances the convergence of computing and geospatial science. Since 2020, he has been ranked among the world’s top 2% of scientists by Stanford University for both career-long and annual citations.

Bio coming soon

Andy is VP Strategy, CTO of Mark III Systems, an award-winning NVIDIA Elite Partner and 2025 NVIDIA Higher Education Research Partner of the Year, with a focus on working with enterprises, research institutions, and universities on building out and co-piloting their AI, GenAI, Modern HPC, and Digital Twin Centers of Excellence. Andy leads a unique, cross-functional team of data scientists, systems engineers, devs, MLOps Engineers, 3D artists, HPC/AI architects, and subject-matter experts, who work tightly together with researchers, data scientists, ML engineers, and technology operations teams to accelerate and move research and innovation forward everyday.

Junfeng Jiao is an Associate Professor in the Community and Regional Planning Program at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the founding director of Urban Information Lab, director of Texas Smart Cities, director of UT Ethical AI program, and a founding member of UT Austin's Good Systems Grand Challenge. 

His research focuses on Smart Cities, Urban Informatics, and Ethical/Generative AI. He uses different information technologies to quantify urban infrastructures and their influences on people’s behaviors. He first coined the term "transit deserts" and measured it in all U.S. cities. Using different machine learning methods, Dr. Jiao investigated and quantified the spatial-temporal patterns of various shared mobility activities (Uber, Scooter, and Bike Sharing) in major U.S. cities. Currently, he is leading three smart city projects: NSF: CIVIC Challenge Community Hub for Smart Mobility (Smart Hub); NSF NRT: AI-Convergent, Responsible, Ethical, Applied Training Experience for Roboticists (Ethical AI); and A Good System for Smart City. He is also a Co-PI for USDOT funded the Center for Climate-Smart Transportation at the Johns Hopkins University and a Co-PI for USHUD funded The Equitable Technologies for Housing Innovation Center at UT Austin.  

Teaming with colleagues at the University of Houston, Dr. Jiao has expanded his Smart City research to the Houston area. As a Co-PI, he received NSF funding to combat the Food Deserts problems with AI technology. The project title is "NSF Convergence Accelerator Track J: Artificial-Intelligence-Based Decision Support for Equitable Food and Nutrition Security in the Houston Area." 

Dr. Jiao has published over 110 peer-reviewed articles and two books on Shared Mobility and Smart Cities, respectively. His research has been reported on in major media outlets such as ABC, Associated Press, CNN, Fox, NBC, NPR, New York Times, SXSW, and Wired. As a PI or Co-PI, Dr. Jiao has raised over $25 million in funding from different sources such as NSF, USDOT, USHUD, UT, Microsoft, MITRE, Google, and others. 

Dr. Junfeng Jiao's Smart City research has received national and international recognition. He is a Fulbright Specialist on Smart City selected by the US Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. 

Dr. Gengchen Mai is currently a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Texas at Austin. He got his Ph.D. in GIScience from UCSB Geography. Before becoming a faculty, he was a Postdoc at Stanford Computer Science. Before joining UT, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Georgia. Dr. Mai's research is Spatially Explicit Artificial Intelligence, Geo-Foundation Models, Geographic Knowledge Graphs, etc. Dr. Mai is the recipient of many prestigious awards including AAG 2021 Dissertation Research Grants, AAG 2022 William L. Garrison Award for Best Dissertation in Computational Geography, AAG 2023 J. Warren Nystrom Dissertation Award, Top 10 WGDC 2022 Global Young Scientist Award, the Jack and Laura Dangermond Graduate Fellowship, UT MGCE Fellowship, etc. According to the historical records of AAG award recipients, he is now the sole recipient in history to have received three AAG doctoral dissertation awards since 2000.

Anupam Saraph is a globally recognized leader in systems modeling and innovation, with nearly four decades of experience driving transformative change. He has pioneered AI solutions for governance in India since 1986, created award-winning simulation models to explore urbanization scenarios in 2000, and led India’s smart city initiatives since 2008. His work has empowered governments to enhance governance, NGOs to scale globally, and businesses to achieve exponential growth.

Acknowledged by the World Economic Forum as a global expert on complex systems and governance, Anupam is celebrated for inventing transformative methods in systems, sustainability, and livability. He is also acclaimed as astonishingly creative and an educator in the best sense of the word.

Anupam holds a Ph.D. in Systems and Sustainability from the University of Groningen and an M.Sc. in Molecular Biology from Savitribai Phule Pune University. Through visionary out-of-the-box thinking, Anupam empowers and inspires leaders globally to shape a more livable future.

Dr. Strover is the Philip G. Warner Regents Professor in Communication, former Chair of the Radio-TV-Film Department at the University of Texas, and now Professor in the School of Journalism and Media where she teaches communication technology and policy courses and co-directs the Technology and Information Policy Institute. She is a founding member and former Chair of Good Systems, the UT-Austin Grand Challenge research project examining Ethics in AI. Her current research projects examine AI, surveillance technologies and public policy; configuring broadband networks; libraries and digital literacy; and the digital divide. Sharon has worked with several international, national and regional government agencies, foundations, and advisory groups on communications policy matters, including Facebook, the EU, The Institute for Library and Museum Services, The US Department of Agriculture, the FCC, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Micron, and Texas state agencies such as the Department of Information Resources, Health and Human Services, the Texas State Library, and others. She is on the Editorial Boards of major communication journals and has chaired two divisions in the International Communication Association. Her work can be found in several major professional journals. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her graduate degrees from Stanford University.

S. Craig Watkins is the Ernest A. Sharpe Centennial Professor and the Executive Director of the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.  His research focuses on the equity implications of computer-mediated technologies.  Craig is one of the Principal Investigators for UT-Austin’s Good Systems Grand Challenge, a University funded initiative that supports multi-disciplinary explorations of the technical, social, and ethical implications of artificial intelligence.  Craig’s team explores the racial equity implications of artificial intelligence, focusing on how implicit biases, for example, in datasets, model formulation, and deployment can lead to disparate impacts, especially in high stakes contexts such as healthcare and policing.  His collaborative research with Design and the School of Information examines how Black and Latinx children interact with AI-consumer devices like digital assistants.  Craig was also part of multidisciplinary team of social scientists, psychologists, and computer scientists who prototyped a chatbot to support parents dealing with postpartum depression.  Craig leads a team that is adopting a data-oriented approach to understanding the social determinants of health.  This current research has led to the design of an AI-based solutions to mitigate the mental healthcare crisis in the U.S.  His team has been selected to join Texas Health Catalyst, a program in the Dell Medical School and Office of Technology Commercialization at UT-Austin that translates early stage ideas and discoveries into products that improve health.

Craig was a Visiting MLK Professor at MIT, where he continues to collaborate with faculty in the Institute for Data, Systems and Society (IDSS) to study the racial equity implications of artificial intelligence.  That work, for example, explores the impact of big data and systemic inequality in housing, the data dilemma in policing, and the future of artificial intelligence and racial justice. 

As the Dean of the University of Texas School of Architecture, Heather is a nationally recognized leader with a history of success and impact — both in industry and academia. Her practice converges in the media, arts, and cultural fields, and she explores the relationship between research and practice — reimagining the discipline through related writing, exhibition, and collaboration. She is a passionate educator who teaches the Practices course for first-year students, as well as advanced design studios at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

A registered architect, Heather is the co-design principal of the practice Axi:Ome in St Louis. She has also worked with Bohlin Cywinski Jackson in Pennsylvania, Marks Barfield in London, and Robert Luchetti Associates in Massachusetts.

Prior to her tenure as the Sam and Marilyn Fox Professor in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University, she was an assistant professor at Virginia Tech. She has also held visiting professor appointments at Konkuk University in South Korea and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece. She earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Virginia Tech and a Master of Architecture degree from Harvard University.

Wente Xiong worked at Dell Graphic card team as Lead engineer.

• Lead Nvidia, AMD and Intel Graphic card CDP launch first-to-market with CEM5 cable design.
• Initiatives on team transformation from Gaming focus to AI and Content creation applications.
• CPG group Game Changer Award CY2022, Innovator's Challenge winner.

• Address Dell business need at Strategic and Tactical levels.

Huihai Wang is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Community and Regional Planning Program at the University of Texas at Austin. With a background in Geographic Information Science, his research explores integrating advanced information technologies into urban planning. His research interests include the development of urban knowledge graphs to enhance data-driven decision-making in the planning process, encoding urban system factors to create urban knowledge-driven AI, leveraging computer vision and autonomous robotics for urban built environment evaluation and mapping, as well as developing strategies for the adoption of autonomous delivery robots in complex urban settings.

Dr. Wei Zhai is an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Texas at San Antonio, focusing on urban resilience and urban science.
Dr. Zhai’s research interests center on how to make cities smart and resilient in the face of local and global environmental change. More specifically, his current research agenda is threefold. (i) He leverages emerging big data and advanced methods to reexamine disaster resilience before, during, and after extreme weather events. (ii) He also studies the quality of planning documents and how plans can be improved to foster transformative actions in the context of climate change. (iii) His third research area is developing and applying geospatial data science methods for better sensing human behavior, social equity, and urban dynamics.

Dr. Zhai’s recent work is published in the Journal of Planning Education and Research, Journal of the American Planning Association, Urban Studies, and Annals of the American Association of Geographers. Through an emphasis on creative independent thinking, mutual learning, and special attention to diversity, he aims to create an inclusive and encouraging learning environment for students. He looks forward to collaborating widely with researchers in the field of Urban Planning, Geography, GIScience, Computer Science, Trasnportation, etc.

Dr. Steve Kramer, Chief Scientist of KUNGFU.AI, is a computational physicist and data science entrepreneur with 32 years of post-Ph.D. experience in AI, data science, research, software, and business management. He earned a Ph.D. in physics in the Center for Nonlinear Dynamics at The University of Texas at Austin. Steve has extensive research experience spanning data mining, machine learning, anomaly detection, bot/cyborg detection, clustering, network graph analysis, deep learning, spatiotemporal forecasting, predictive analytics, social media analytics, and pattern discovery/recognition. In 2014, he patented a robust method for dynamic anomaly detection based on chaos theory. Steve spoke at Data Day Texas in 2014 and 2018 and at Data Day Seattle in 2016. Since 2011, he has served as a program committee member and reviewer for the ACM KDD and IEEE Security and Intelligence Informatics conferences. He has acted as the Principal Investigator on multiple subcontracts for DARPA's Information Innovation Office and for the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU). He is proud to serve on the Board of the Austin Forum on Technology and Society and as a member of Board of Technical Advisors for data.world.

Junfeng Jiao is an Associate Professor in the Community and Regional Planning Program at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the founding director of Urban Information Lab, director of Texas Smart Cities, director of UT Ethical AI program, and a founding member of UT Austin's Good Systems Grand Challenge.

His research focuses on Smart Cities, Urban Informatics, and Ethical/Generative AI. He uses different information technologies to quantify urban infrastructures and their influences on people’s behaviors. He first coined the term "transit deserts" and measured it in all U.S. cities. Using different machine learning methods,

Dr. Jiao investigated and quantified the spatial-temporal patterns of various shared mobility activities (Uber, Scooter, and Bike Sharing) in major U.S. cities. Currently, he is leading three smart city projects: NSF: CIVIC Challenge Community Hub for Smart Mobility (Smart Hub); NSF NRT: AI-Convergent, Responsible, Ethical, Applied Training Experience for Roboticists (Ethical AI); and A Good System for Smart City. He is also a Co-PI for USDOT funded the Center for Climate-Smart Transportation at the Johns Hopkins University and a Co-PI for USHUD funded The Equitable Technologies for Housing Innovation Center at UT Austin.