Dr. Thanassis Rikakis is the second dean of the Iovine and Young Academy (IYA) for Arts, Technology, and the Business of Innovation at the University of Southern California. The IYA provides unique BS and MS degrees that cultivate expertise at the intersection of technology, design, business, and creativity.  Dr. Rikakis is also a professor at the IYA and a courtesy professor of Bioengineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. He co-leads the USC Interactive Neurorehabilitation Lab.   His research spans systems design, engineering, and arts with a special focus on interactive neurorehabilitation, adaptive learning, experiential media, and cyber-human intelligence.  Before joining the Academy Dr. Rikakis served as founding director of the Calhoun Honors Discovery Program and director of the Calhoun Center for Higher Education Innovation. These initiatives focus on adaptive, transdisciplinary, and trans-sector life-long learning. From 2015 until 2017 Dr. Rikakis served as executive vice president and provost at Virginia Tech, where he led the development of transdisciplinary discovery communities, and co-led plans for the expansion of the university’s health sciences campus in Roanoke and cross-sector initiatives in Northern VA. From 2012 to 2015 he served as vice provost for design arts and technology at Carnegie Mellon University where he founded the Integrative Design, Arts and Technology (IDEATE) network.  He has also served as founding director of the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering at Arizona State University and Associate Director for Research and Development of the Computer Music Center at Columbia University. Dr. Rikakis has authored 45 publications spanning computing, engineering, health, education, design, and the arts. He has composed 30 original music compositions performed internationally. 

Marcelo Araujo, DDS, MS ’99, PhD ’03, dean of the University at Buffalo School of Dental Medicine, is a distinguished academic leader, esteemed professor of periodontology, and proud UB alumnus. An internationally recognized clinical researcher and epidemiologist, he joined the school in 2023 as its 14th dean. 

Prior to joining UB as dean and professor, Dr. Araujo was the chief science officer of the American Dental Association (ADA), chief executive officer of the ADA Science & Research Institute (ADASRI), and interim chief executive officer of the ADA Foundation (ADAF). These influential roles allowed him to cultivate strategic insights and develop expertise in organized dentistry. He also held positions in the pharmaceutical industry, where he made a significant impact in health care products research for more than a decade.

Dr. Araujo’s extensive experience in clinical care, research, health care business, and health sciences complements his deep understanding of the opportunities and challenges in dentistry. His emphasis on leveraging the power and science of innovation enhances the school’s academic, research, and clinical endeavors while improving its national and global rankings and reputation.     

Dr. Araujo earned a PhD in epidemiology and community health and a master’s degree in oral sciences from UB, where he also completed a fellowship in periodontology clinical research and teaching. He received his DDS in 1995 and a certificate in periodontology in 1997 from Universidade Gama Filho in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Art Fong is the Technical Leader for Smarter Chemistry on the Environment Technologies team at Apple, driving chemistry innovation and rigorous controls to design products to be safe for anyone who assembles, uses, or recycles them — and to be better for the environment. He also manages the Apple Green Chemistry Advisory Board, an independent group of leading researchers and academics focused on integrating green chemistry into Apple’s products and supply chain.

Dr. Fong is engaged in a number of collaborative projects to advance the science and practice of green, sustainable chemistry to catalyze change across the electronics industry and beyond. He is co-chair of CHEMFORWARD’s Technical Advisory Group, working to guide hazard assessment harmonization, data quality, process transparency, and scientific integrity to identify chemicals that are inherently benign for their intended use. Dr. Fong is on the Design Team of the Clean Electronics Production Network, which unites diverse stakeholders to understand, address, and eliminate workers’ exposure to toxic chemicals in the electronics supply chain. He is also a member of the Green Ribbon Science Panel, who advise the California Department of Toxic Substances Control on the implementation of the Safer Consumer Products (SCP) Regulations and other topics related to green chemistry. Dr. Fong is an Advisory Board member of the recently (2024) launched Safer Chemistry Impact Fund, which was created to mobilize global investment to systematically eliminate hazardous chemicals and replace them with safer alternatives that are verified to be protective of human and environmental health.

Alexandra McPherson is director of the Investor Environmental Health Network (IEHN) for Clean Production Action. Through IEHN, Alexandra provides expertise, guidance, and counsel to investors on engagement strategies that positively impact corporate behavior on chemical footprinting, more sustainable and safer chemistry innovations, and environmental justice. 

Alexandra leverages her deep competency in communications and partnership development to build multistakeholder initiatives that motivate change and investment in environmental solutions critical to chemical pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate change. Her work includes convening global leaders from finance, industry, environmental advocacy, and government to influence time-bound targets in innovative platforms such as the United Nations’s Global Framework on Chemicals: For a Planet Free of Harm from Chemicals and Waste. Ms. McPherson’s partnership work with academia has resulted in the Collaborative for the Regenerative Economy (CoRE) with the University at Buffalo's Materials Design and Innovation Department and Transition Finance for Sustainable Chemicals and Materials with the Sustainable Chemistry Catalyst at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Alexandra co-founded Clean Production Action and is a principal of Niagara Share LLC. She is a graduate of the Stanford University School of Business LEAD Executive Education program and obtained her undergraduate degree in Communications at the University of New Hampshire (UNH). She serves on the board of Clean + Healthy NY, UNH’s Sustainability Advisory Board, and Change Chemistry’s Member Advisory Committee. 

McPherson received her BA from the University of New Hampshire and is a graduate of the LEAD program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Seval Yildirim is the Vice Provost for Inclusive Excellence, Chief Diversity Officer, and Professor of Law at the University at Buffalo (UB).  Before coming to UB last fall, she was the Vice President for Diversity Initiatives and Chief Diversity Officer at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Prior to UNLV, Yildirim was Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs and Development and Co-Chief Diversity Officer at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB). A professor of law at Whittier College before joining CSUSB, Yildirim has also held visiting faculty positions at Harvard, UC Berkeley, Villanova University, and New York University.

Professor Yildirim is a scholar and leader with an impressive record of advancing equity and inclusivity in higher education in the areas of recruiting and retaining faculty and students from underrepresented groups, promoting inclusive pedagogy and classrooms, and building high school-to-university pipelines. Her research and scholarship center on secularism in comparative contexts, focusing on Turkey, India, and the United States, as well as international human rights and issues of human dignity, specifically regarding minority religious identities. Professor Yildirim has taught courses on Islamic law, international law, comparative law, and U.S. constitutional law.

Professor Yildirim holds a JD and LLM from the New York University School of Law, an MA in International Affairs from the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, and a BA from Randolph-Macon Woman's College.Seval Yildirim is the Vice Provost for Inclusive Excellence, Chief Diversity Officer, and Professor of Law at the University at Buffalo (UB).  Before coming to UB last fall, she was the Vice President for Diversity Initiatives and Chief Diversity Officer at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Prior to UNLV, Yildirim was Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs and Development and Co-Chief Diversity Officer at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB). A professor of law at Whittier College before joining CSUSB, Yildirim has also held visiting faculty positions at Harvard, UC Berkeley, Villanova University, and New York University.

Professor Yildirim is a scholar and leader with an impressive record of advancing equity and inclusivity in higher education in the areas of recruiting and retaining faculty and students from underrepresented groups, promoting inclusive pedagogy and classrooms, and building high school-to-university pipelines. Her research and scholarship center on secularism in comparative contexts, focusing on Turkey, India, and the United States, as well as international human rights and issues of human dignity, specifically regarding minority religious identities. Professor Yildirim has taught courses on Islamic law, international law, comparative law, and U.S. constitutional law.

Professor Yildirim holds a JD and LLM from the New York University School of Law, an MA in International Affairs from the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, and a BA from Randolph-Macon Woman's College.

Joanne Song McLaughlin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University at Buffalo. She is a labor economist whose research evaluates public policies that affect vulnerable populations faced with critical life transitions such as older workers’ transition to retirement and young adults’ transition to adulthood. Dr. McLaughlin’s work examines the intended and unintended consequences of public policies such as anti-discrimination laws, health insurance mandates, barriers to retirement, and the potential effects of artificial intelligence on the future of work, which has been influential in designing more effective evidence-based legislation. Dr. McLaughlin has compared the impact of Social Security reform to extend the work lives of older workers across states that provide varying employment protections. She has documented an important shortcoming of our current anti-discrimination laws in protecting older women in the workplace due to a peculiarity in our legal system. For young adults, Dr. McLaughlin’s research has shown that state health insurance mandates that impose dependency requirements contributed to lowering the marriage rate of young adults and raised the probability of young women having children out-of-wedlock. She has published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and she teaches labor economics, econometrics, and econometric methods for causal inference. 

Dr. McLaughlin received her PhD in economics from the University of California, Irvine.

Dr. K. Venkatesh Prasad serves as the Senior Vice President of Research and Chief Innovation Officer at the Center for Automotive Research.  Prior to joining CAR, Dr. Prasad spent over 26 years at Ford Motor Company, where he held a broad range of leadership roles in R&D and innovation acceleration across Ford’s global Vehicle Components & Systems Engineering organization, and most recently in Corporate Strategy. During that time, he co-founded and led Ford’s Silicon Valley Labs in Palo Alto, California.

Before joining Ford, Dr. Prasad was a Senior Research Scientist at the Ricoh California Research Center. Prasad earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Rutgers University and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Washington State University, both with an emphasis in computer engineering.  Dr. Prasad earned an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras, and a B.E. in Electronics and Communications Engineering from NIT Trichy, University of Madras, where he received a distinguished alum award.

Kim Lloyd is the Director of Special Projects at Fuzehub, a business development service for start up, small and mid-sized companies in New York State.   Ms. Lloyd is an experienced leader in the internet, technology, and manufacturing space. She was the Director of Operations and Enterprise Products at GlobalSpec, a portal designed to connect industrial part manufacturers with engineering professionals around the globe. In addition, she worked at MapInfo for 14 years as a Product Manager and Product Marketing Manager for several GIS software products. 

As the VP of Marketing and COO of Bright Hub, Ms. Lloyd led the creation of a high-volume, multimillion-dollar media property website from the ground up with a 12-person team and freelance network of over 3,000 writers and editors. Traffic grew from 0 to 18 million visits a month in under 4 years and was one of the top 100 website properties in the United States.

In addition to her duties at FuzeHub, Ms. Lloyd’s company, Latham Group Consulting, has helped clients in the IT, health care, and manufacturing industries design and build small websites to large-scale portals.  As Director of Special Projects for FuzeHub, Ms. Lloyd is responsible for guiding the efforts of several programs targeted at helping small to mid-size manufacturers including supply chain projects, as well as overseeing the technology driving the FuzeHub B2B Connection portal.  In addition, Ms. Lloyd is tasked with growing FuzeHub’s ecosystem through grants and marketing services. 

Ms. Lloyd holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems Management from SUNY Buffalo State and an MBA in Management and Technology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Ajey Jacob is the Director of the Application Specific Intelligent Computing (ASIC) Lab, a hardware research group at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute (ISI). He brings 16 years of industry research, development, and manufacturing experience from Intel Corporation and GlobalFoundries (GF) to ISI. He primarily focuses on materials, devices, integration, and fabrication aspects of advanced and differentiating technology research.

Before joining ISI in 2019, Dr. Jacob generated a strategy, founded, and managed the Differentiating Technology Research Group for the GF's worldwide R&D.  He has also served GF in various other capacities, such as leading the exploratory device and integration research group for the IBM Alliance in Albany, NY. Until 2011, Dr. Jacob worked as a senior research scientist for Intel Corporation's component research organization. At Intel, he managed two industry-sponsored strategic research consortia for next-generation CMOS devices and materials, and many other Intel-sponsored research projects. He has also been a device engineer supporting the high-volume manufacturing at Intel and GlobalFoundries.

In addition to his numerous publications, Dr. Jacob has more than 300 worldwide patents. At GF, Dr. Jacob was conferred the title of Master Inventor from the years 2017 to 2020. In 2013' and 2016' Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) awarded him with the Mahboob Khan Outstanding Industry Liaison Award. 

Dr. Jacob received his Ph.D. in Physics from the Chalmers University of Technology/ Gothenburg University, Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2002.

Dr. K. K Sankaran retired as Senior Technical Fellow from Boeing in 2014.  He has been an adjunct faculty at several universities since 1991 and presently teaches a course at Washington University in St. Louis. His expertise is in metallic materials and processes related to aerospace products from their conception through design, manufacture, service, and retirement. Dr. Sankaran’s key contributions include the development of technologies related to the insertion of alloys and related fabrication processes in aerospace products.  He has also developed metrics for life prediction models to anticipate and reduce the cost of repair and maintenance of parts in service.

Dr. Sankaran has helped set up global research collaborations with public and private scientific organizations and academic institutions in the US, UK, Australia, and India.   He has served as a member of the Chancellor’s National Research Advisory Council, Washington University in St. Louis, and on the Council and Research Board of The Welding Institute, UK.  He is the prime author of the textbook “Metallurgy and Design of Alloys with Hierarchical Microstructures”, Elsevier (2017) with the second edition in preparation. 

Dr. K. K Sankaran received his PhD in metallurgy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mark O’Neill is the Founder & CEO of Innovation Impact Partners and has more than 25 years of industrial experience in the creation, development, commercialization, and value maximization across all segments of advanced materials and technology for semiconductor manufacturing.

Dr. O’Neill discovered and commercialized porous extreme low dielectric constant materials for interconnect manufacturing. As a Global Technology Director of a Deposition Materials Division, he led the new product development for the first low-temperature silicon oxide atomic layer deposition family of products. He also gained extensive experience as the Global Technology Director for Planarization Materials, developing high-performance chemical mechanical planarization slurries. Most recently Dr. O’Neill served as Chief Technology Officer for one of the world’s largest and most diverse semiconductor materials businesses, including specialty gases and advanced patterning technology. He has co-authored more than 70 patent families, published and presented more than 50 papers, and delivered multiple invited talks at international symposia focused on new materials and processes for semiconductor manufacturing.

Dr. O’Neill received his PhD from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and held postdoctoral research positions at the University of Texas, Austin, and the University of Pittsburgh.

Dennis Elsenbeck is Head of Energy and Sustainability, Energy Consulting Services; Buffalo. He provides consulting services on a broad range of energy-related opportunities encompassing a forward view of supply, distribution, and demand options. In his leadership role with a major U.S. utility for nearly 30 years, At Phillips Lytle, Mr. Elsenbeck provides business perspectives on long-term policies and the economic landscape. He assists clients with due diligence and regulatory compliance on energy transactions; regulatory counseling involving Public Service Commission proceedings; energy procurement and utility negotiations involving government entities and municipalities; procurement consulting regarding the reduction of energy costs and review of economic incentives; market-driven integrated resource planning and identifying commercial and technical issues associated with energy-related opportunities. Mr. Elsenbeck helps clients move critical energy projects forward by providing creative solutions and overcoming project challenges. He works to develop the voice of the consumer in energy policy and bill impacts as sustainability becomes a focus of energy policy. He collaborates with clients in shaping the “utility of the future.”

Mr. Elsenbeck is a well-recognized expert in the energy field and is a highly sought-after lecturer on a variety of topics across the U.S. He served on the 22-Member Climate Action Council that developed the recommendations for the Scoping Plan to meet the objectives of NY’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.

Mr. Elsenbeck received his master’s degree in applied engineering from the University at Buffalo and his MBA degree from the University of Rochester. 

Rohini Srihari is a professor in the Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering at the State University of New York, Buffalo where her research focuses on natural language processing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and information retrieval. Dr. Srihari’s research focuses on advancing the state-of-the-art in socialbots capable of engaging in empathetic, interesting, and purposeful conversations. She directs a research group focused on Conversational AI for Social Good that addresses research issues in building trustworthy socialbots for various purposes, including combating disinformation as well as assisting the disabled. In 2021 Dr. Srihari supervised an interdisciplinary student team that competed and won the bronze prize in the Alexa Prize Socialbot Grand Challenge. 

Dr. Srihari has also worked extensively with the US Government in developing innovative multilingual text mining solutions.  She has served as Chief Data Scientist at PeaceTech Lab, a non-profit incubated within the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC. Dr. Srihari directed a multidisciplinary team in the development of an AI platform that leverages diverse data sources to provide scalable solutions for conflict prevention and early warning of social disruption in fragile countries. Her research is currently focused on AI for Social Good and includes topics such as predicting social unrest, identifying and combating disinformation, and conversational AI (chatbots).

Dr. Srihari has founded and directed technology start-ups, focusing on big data analytics solutions for various markets. Two of these companies were subsequently acquired by large media analytics companies. In her roles as founder, CEO and chief scientist at these companies, Dr. Srihari has handled all aspects of launching a technology start-up, including raising venture capital, building technical and business teams, directing product development, and marketing and sales.

Dr. Srihari received her B. Math degree from the University of Waterloo (Canada) and her PhD in Computer Science from the State University of New York.

E. Bruce Pitman is a Professor in the Department of Materials Design and Innovation and currently serves as the Interim Vice-President and Chief Information Office at UB.  An expert in mathematical modeling and high-performance computing, for the last two decades he has been studying uncertainty quantification – techniques for understanding uncertainty in models of physical or biological systems, and how computing can account for these uncertainties. 

Dr. Pitman served as Vice-Provost for Educational Technology from 2000-2203, Associate Dean for Research and Sponsored Programs in the College of Arts and Sciences from 2003-2011, and Dean of CAS from 2011-2016. During 2019-2021 Dr. Pitman served as Interim Director of the Institute for Computational and Data Science. Every summer since 1999 (except for Covid years) he has collaborated with UB’s Center for Computational Research to organize a workshop in computational science for high school students.

Dr. Pitman holds a bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics from Northwestern University and earned his PhD in mathematics from Duke University in 1985. He held postdoctoral appointments at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University; the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications, University of Minnesota; and the New Jersey Institute of Technology before he joined the UB faculty in 1989.

Christophe Nicolle is Professor at the Université de Bourgogne (UB), France. He is a researcher in Knowledge Engineering and Artificial Reasoning at the CIAD laboratory at the University of Burgundy and a lecturer in the Computer Science department of the Dijon-Auxerre-Nevers IUT. He is co-director of the PEPR Sustainable and Intelligent Cities scientific committee and a member of the national teaching committee for the Technological University Institute bachelor's degree in computer science and data science.

Dr. Nicolle has published over 200 papers in the field of artificial intelligence. He is the co-founder and the former Director of the CIAD-Lab. Over the past 30 years, he has supported numerous start-up and AI transition projects as founder and head of the Checksem business unit with the University of Burgundy. Dr. Nicolle has founded several companies, including Active3D (a subsidiary of Sopra-Steria since 2016) and Wittym in 2019.

Dr. Nicolle is involved in many national research projects in France combining material science and Artificial Intelligence. He is the scientific manager of the AIDD4H joint laboratory, which partners with the biotech company OPM (Drug Discovery and AI). Dr. Nicolle is the scientific co-director of the rehabilitation and innovation research axis at Dijon University Hospital.  Winner of the H2030 global innovation competition in the Big Data category in 2014, he is currently working with the Dijon metropolis on the European H2020 Response project on AI and smart cities.

Dr. Christophe Nicolle received his Ph.D. from the Université Bourgogne in Computer Science.

Francis J. Alexander is the Director for AI Strategy and Research with a National Security Focus at Argonne National Laboratory. Before that, he was the Deputy Director of the Computational Science Initiative at Brookhaven National Laboratory from 2017-2023. Earlier, at Los Alamos National Laboratory he was the acting division leader of the Computer, Computational, and Statistical Sciences (CCS) Division.

During his more than 20 years at Los Alamos, he held several leadership roles, including as deputy division leader of the CCS Division, Information Sciences Group Leader, and leader of the Information Science and Technology Institute. Dr. Alexander first joined Los Alamos in 1991 as a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Nonlinear Studies. He returned to Los Alamos in 1998 after doing postdoctoral work at the Institute for Scientific Computing Research at DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and serving as a research assistant professor at Boston University’s Center for Computational Science.

Dr. Alexander’s current research interests include artificial intelligence, machine learning, decision-making under uncertainty, optimal design of experiments, computational physics, and nonequilibrium physics. He has led many research projects including as PI of the ExaScale Computing Codesign Center for Machine Learning (ExaLearn) and has published more than 70 papers in peer-reviewed venues.

Dr. Alexander has a Ph.D. in Physics from Rutgers University and a B.S. degree in physics and mathematics from The Ohio State University.