Darran Anderson is the Director of Strategy and Innovation for TxDOT.  He is responsible for TxDOT's strategic innovation, emerging technology, and research initiatives; and performance analytics and enterprise initiatives; with the objective of providing a forward-thinking efficient approach for an enhanced future of mobility throughout the state.  He oversees the Strategic Initiatives and Innovation; and Research and Technology Implementation divisions.  Mr. Anderson has over 35 years’ experience as a U.S. Army officer, consultant, program manager and senior executive.  And, perhaps most importantly for this event, he’s a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin.

Bart Bohn is a Partner in ATP, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on funding deep tech innovations addressing climate change, the future of work and healthcare. He is the Director of Special Projects of Pecan Street, a 501c3 enabling climate change solutions by removing data barriers to innovations, policies and research. Bohn also partnered with the City of Austin to co-found the Green Workforce Accelerator to help organizations create and scale programs to train and place members of underserved communities in the green jobs of tomorrow. At the McCombs School of Business, he teaches Entrepreneurial Finance. 
Previously, Bohn was also a Director at the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), a joint-venture between the City of Austin and The University of Texas at Austin, where he led programs to support early-stage startups focused on software, hardware, water and circular economy solutions. 
He also founded Water RIOT (Water Resiliency with Internet of Things), to apply IoT technology to water infrastructure; Build Sec Foundry, a 501c3 venture studio to help veterans launch cybersecurity startups; 3 Day Startup, a 501c3 to provide learning-by-doing entrepreneurial education programs to college students; and Student Entrepreneur Acceleration and Launch (SEAL), to transition most promising UT Austin startups to the mainstream startup ecosystem.
Bohn also co-founded Ravel, a machine learning computational platform for graph data and which was acquired by the W20 Group; and Embrace, a predictive customer service platform for retailers. These startups were members of Techstars, Capital Factory, and the Austin Technology Incubator and were both selected to the Austin A-List. He is also the longest running startup pitch coach for SXSW Pitch, the premier startup event at the globally leading SXSW annual event. In addition, he was a management consultant focused on operational strategies for energy, services, and technology companies.

Dr. Dhurandhars research has focused on understanding AI methods through their statistical/output behaviors. He has worked on projects spanning multiple industries such as Semi-conductor manufacturing, Oil and Gas, Procurement, Retail, Utilities, Airline, Health Care. His current research includes proposing various methods for enhancing trust in systems by developing methods that try to explain or understand their behaviors. His recent work was featured in Forbes and PC magazine with corresponding technical contribution in leading AI research venues such as NeurIPS. His work has helped uncover interesting insights in fields such as Olfaction with papers in reputed journals such as Science and Nature Communications with extensive media coverage (Quartz, New Yorker, Atlantic, Biological Scene, Science News). His research also received the AAAI deployed application award, AAAI HCOMP best paper honorable mention, and was selected as Best of ICDM twice. For his work on explainability he was invited to attend Schloss Dagstuhl seminars as well as provide multiple invited talks including a industry keynote at ACM CODS-COMAD 2021. He also Co-led the creation of the AI Explainability 360 open source toolkit. Besides research impact, his work has also gone into IBM product and he has received Outstanding Technical Achievement as well as IBM Corporate award. He has been an Area Chair and SPC member for top AI conferences and served on National Science Foundation (NSF) panels for the small business innovative research (SBIR) program. He also serves on the invention disclosure committee (IDT) in IBM Research.

Chelsea Collier is a doctoral student in the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin, a graduate research assistant for the Smart Hand Tool Project for Good Systems (an interdisciplinary core research program on ethical AI), and an NSF Research Traineeship Fellow in Ethical AI. Her research centers on public engagement with under-represented audiences and explores how AI may accelerate community agency. Her recent professional experience includes founding a nonprofit, Digi.City, to advance smart(er) cities for the social good. She also serves as the Editor-At-Large for Smart Cities Connect. She is a University of Manchester (UK) Fellow (2019), a Marshall Memorial Fellow (2018) and an Eisenhower Fellow (2016). Her experience in government, economic development, social enterprise and tech entrepreneurship informs her cross sector approach.

David Atkinson is an in-house counsel for the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) and teaches Law, Ethics, and AI at UT. Prior to law school at Georgetown he earned a Master's of education at Harvard and was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne. As his class suggests, he's especially interested in how ethics and the law intersect with artificial intelligence.

Michael F. Goodchild is Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Until 2012 he held the Jack and Laura Dangermond Chair of Geography and was Director of UCSB’s Center for Spatial Studies. He received his BA degree from Cambridge University in Physics in 1965 and his PhD in Geography from McMaster University in 1969. His research and teaching interests focus on issues in geographic information science, including uncertainty in geographic information, discrete global grids, and volunteered geographic in-formation. He has directed or co-directed several large funded projects, including the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, the Alexandria Digital Library, and the Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science. He was elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2002, and Foreign Member of the Royal Society and Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 2010; and in 2007 he received the Prix Vautrin Lud. He has published over 550 books and articles. He moved to Seattle upon retirement in 2012, and currently holds part-time positions as Research Professor at Arizona State University and as Distinguished Chair Professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His full CV is at www.geog.ucsb.edu/~good.

Juan Sequeda is the Principal Scientist and Head of the AI Lab at data.world. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from The University of Texas at Austin. Juan’s research and industry work has been on the intersection of data and AI, with the goal to reliably create knowledge from inscrutable data, specifically designing and building Knowledge Graph for enterprise data and metadata management. Juan is the co-author of the book “Designing and Building Enterprise Knowledge Graph” and the co-host of Catalog and Cocktails, an honest, no-bs, non-salesy data podcast.

Lonny Stern is the Executive Director of Movability, which works to advance commuting options that reduce traffic congestion, improve air quality, and enhance the economic vitality of Central Texas. Lonny has worked in a variety of roles, including as a Public Involvement Manager at the Austin Transit Partnership, Community Engagement Administrator for CapMetro, Senior Director of the STEM Council at Skillpoint Alliance; and Outreach Director at Empower Texans (formerly CPPP) and Communications & Outreach Director for Hope Street Group -- both nonpartisan policy organizations. He has held additional roles at aGLIFF, 91.7FM - KOOP Radio, and Project Transitions, and he has been a member of Movability's board of directors since 2019. Lonny earned his master’s degree at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT-Austin. He earned a BA in English & Communications at Florida State 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.

Sam Krassenstein serves as the Chief of Infrastructure for the City of Detroit under Mayor Mike Duggan.  
Sam has worked for the City of Detroit since 2016. He previously served as the City's Utility Infrastructure Coordinator and the Interim Chief of Mobility Innovation before moving into his current role. Sam resides in Detroit with his wife, Ashley, and son, Ezra (1). He is a graduate of Bucknell University and the University of Michigan Ross School of Business & Taubman School of Arts & Architecture. 

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.

Sean Henry Lewis is a BS student in Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin with a focus in data science. As a Smart City Researcher at the Urban Information Lab under Dr. Junfeng Jiao, he specializes in generative AI and neural networks for ML-enabled applications. His focus on deterministic, data-driven models ensures reliable outputs, promoting accuracy and trust in information generation. Notably, Sean led the development behind OpenCityAI, a conversational AI model trained on 200+ city data portals, and authored a paper on Generative AI for Digital Planning in Computers Environments and Urban Systems (April 2024)

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.

Bio coming soon

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. Ming Zhang is a Professor and the Program Director of Community and Regional Planning in the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to joining UT Austin, Dr. Zhang held several academic and professional positions, including tenure-track Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University, Research Scientist at the Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany, New York, and Lecturer and licensed Planner/Architect at the Huazhong (Central China) University of Science & Technology, Wuhan, China.
Dr. Zhang’s research and teaching interests include urban and regional planning (transportation), the relationship between the built environment and travel behavior, economic and equity impacts of transportation investments, and international planning issues. His recent research has focused on megaregional transportation issues, Transit-Oriented Development, and high-speed rail and urban spatial development.

Dr. Zhang is the Director of the University Transportation Center (UTC) Cooperative Mobility for Competitive Megaregions (CM2) granted by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

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. 

Kijin Seong is a postdoctoral research fellow in The School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. She finished her PhD from the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University. Kijin earned a Bachelor of Architecture from Yonsei University, South Korea, a Master of Architecture from Seoul National University, South Korea, and a master of community and regional planning from the University of Texas at Austin. Her ongoing research focuses on the smart city framework for climate resilience, disaster resilience, climate change adaptation, and environmental equity.

As an employee of the City of Austin Office of Resilience, Marc works with city departments to embed climate adaptation strategies into long term operation and asset management planning. In this role, he also supports community organizers to increase climate resilience in the Eastern Crescent. Marc received a Certificate in Climate Change and Health from the Yale School of Public Health, a Master of Science in Sustainable Design from the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture and a Bachelor of Science in Urban Planning from Arizona State University Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. He is currently a member of the LEED Design and Construction Consensus Committee and the co-director of the UT City + Climate CoLab.

Dr Nagy directs the Intelligent Environments Lab at UT Austin since 2016. A roboticist turned building engineer, his research interests are in smart buildings and cities, control systems for zero emission building operation, and the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence for the built environment for a sustainable energy transition. He is a fellow of IBPSA World and has received the Outstanding Researcher Award from IBPSA-USA in 2022, several Best Paper awards from the CISBAT conference, Building & Environment journal, as well as a Highest Cited Paper award from Applied Energy. Dr Nagy holds a PhD and MSc in Mechanical Engineering from ETH Zurich.

Dev Niyogi is a renowned expert on urban climate and environmental studies as highlighted by over 300 scientific research papers, Helmut Landsberg Award for Urban Climate by the American Meteorological Society, invited membership to various organizations and editorship of top scientific research journals such as Computational Urban Science, Urban Climate, and Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology. He is also coeditor of recent book: Global Urban Heat Mitigation published by Elsevier

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.

Thomas W. Sanchez, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University. He earned his PhD in City Planning from Georgia Tech and a Master of City and Regional Planning from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. His research and teaching focus on planning methods, technology, and scholarly impact. His most recent books include Networks in the Knowledge Economy (with Denise Bedford) and Planning Knowledge and Research. His forthcoming book, AI for Urban Planning will be published by Routledge in 2025. Sanchez serves as the American Planning Association (APA) Education Committee Chair and as a member of APA’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Foresight Community.

Daniel Jaffe, Ph.D., is UT’s Vice President for Research. He and his office support President Hartzell’s priorities of expanding the university’s research capabilities and creating new opportunities for collaboration around campus. The Office of the Vice President for Research, Scholarship and Creative Endeavors aims to make it easier for faculty and staff to design, pursue, and find funding for projects that advance our understanding of the world and improve our place in it. Dr. Jaffe has supervised the creation of three cross-campus interdisciplinary initiatives, including a grand challenge program, Bridging Barriers, that brings together more than 150 researchers from 52 specialties and departments.

Dr. Jaffe also oversees nearly a dozen core research facilities, such as the Texas Advanced Computing Center and Applied Research Laboratories, as well as the Energy and IC2 institutes.

Dr. Jaffe’s own research focuses on the formation of stars and planetary systems, and he is principal investigator for a high-resolution near-infrared spectrometer at McDonald Observatory, as well as for a high-resolution spectrometer for the Giant Magellan Telescope.

Dr. Zhong-Ren Peng is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning and Director of iAdapt: International Center for Adaptation Planning and Design, at the College of Design, Construction and Planning, University of Florida. His research focuses on three general questions: 1) What is the role of artificial intelligence in the urban and regional planning process? 2) How can the transportation system be made more sustainable and resilient? 3) How can adaptation strategies be developed for the built and natural environment in response to climate change? He has obtained over $20 million from diverse sources to support his research and has published 184 journal articles, two books, and 10 book chapters across multiple disciplines. Among them, 46 articles are "extremely highly cited," according to Dimensions Analytics. He is ranked in the top 2% of scientists worldwide based on Stanford University's list.

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.