Speakers' Bios

Workshop co-Chairs

Maryam Fazel is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington, with adjunct appointments in Computer Science and Engineering, Mathematics, and Statistics. Maryam received her MS and PhD in EE from Stanford University, her BS from Sharif University of Technology in Iran, and was a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech prior to joining UW. Her research interests are broad, centered at mathematical optimization, including convex optimization theory and algorithms, low-rank matrix methods, and applications in machine learning, signal processing, and control systems. Maryam is a recipient of the NSF Career Award (2009), the UW EE Outstanding Teaching Award (2009), and the UAI (Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence) conference Best Student Paper Award (2014). She coauthored a paper selected as a Fast-Breaking paper by Science Watch (2011) on the fundamental problem of low-rank matrix recovery. She was a plenary speaker at the Intl. Linear Algebra Society conference (2013), and the Women in Mathematics Program at the Institute for Advanced Study (2014).

Babak Parvizis is a Vice President at Amazon Inc. He received his graduate degrees from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He has been an assistant professor (2003-2008), an associate professor (2008-2012), and an affiliate professor (2012-present) in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Washington. He was with Google from 2010 to 2014 where he was a Google Distinguished Engineer and a Director at Google [x]. He is the creator of Google Glass. He founded, built, and led the Google Glass program from 2010 till 2013. He is also the co-founder of the Smart Contact Lens program at Google. Babak's areas of interest span high-tech with social impact, novel communication and computing paradigms, biotechnology, nano and micro technology, photonics, and engineering at scale.

Speakers

Steven H. Low is a Professor of the Computing and Mathematical Sciences Department and the Electrical Engineering Department at the California Institute of Technology. He is known for his work on the theory and practice of Internet congestion control, and optimal power flow in power systems. Low received his BS in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1987, and PhD in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of Pravin Varaiya in 1992. He was with AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ, from 1992-1996, the University of Melbourne, Australia, from 1996-2000, and joined Caltech in 2000.

Glenn Ricart brings forty years of innovation in computer networking and related fields to US Ignite. Glenn is an Internet pioneer who implemented the first Inter-net interconnection point (the FIX in College Park, Maryland) and was recognized for this achievement by being inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in August 2013. In one of his previous roles where he was academic CIO at the University of Maryland, his campus implemented the first institution-wide TCP/IP (Internet) network in 1983 using low-cost PDP-11 routers ("Fuzballs") with software devised at the University of Maryland. Glenn was principal investigator of SURAnet, the first regional TCP/IP (Internet) network of academic and commercial institutions. His inventions have resulted in more than a dozen patents. Dr. Ricart has also held other senior management positions including Executive Vice President and CTO for Novell in the 1990s, Managing Director of PricewaterhouseCoopers, and CEO and President of National LambdaRail.

Vikram Jandhyala is Vice Provost for Innovation at the University of Washington and professor in the department of electrical engineering. He is founding UW director of the UW-PNNL northwest institute for advanced computing (NIAC), and directs the applied computational engineering (ACE) lab in UW EE. His research has been funded by DARPA, the semiconductor industry, national labs, DoD, SBIR/STTR programs, and NSF, including an NSF CAREER award, and has received awards from UIUC, IEEE, UW, and NASA.

Jose Baptista joined the 100 Resilient Cities from a career of developing and providing professional services. He has over thirty years of information technology, business development and management experience. He managed a consultant practice providing program management, business development, engineering, and vendor management support. Public sector, emergency management, strategic planning, business, and management of complex technical and non-technical programs are his areas of expertise.

Michael Mattmiller is the Chief Technology Officer and Director of the Dept. of Information Technology for the City of Seattle. In this role, Michael is responsible for connecting the City to the public, providing the City's workforce with productivity enhancing technology solutions, and ensuring the public can equitably participate in the City's high-tech economy. Since joining the City in 2014, Michael has focused on delivering solutions that optimize the City's use of technology resources, build trust in how the City uses the public's information, and increased the availability of gigabit broadband service throughout to homes and businesses across Seattle. Prior to his work at the City, Michael was a senior strategist at Microsoft focused on data privacy and protection practices across the company's enterprise cloud solutions and a consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers

Government Sponsors

David Corman is a Program Director and leader of the Cyber Physical Systems program at the National Science Foundation. Dr. Corman has a broad range of research interests spanning many technologies fundamental to CPS application areas including transportation, energy, medical devices, and manufacturing. Dr. Corman has extensive industrial experience in the development, design, and manufacture of CPS systems. Dr. Corman received PhD degree in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland.

Gurdip Singh is a Program Director in the Division of Computer and Network Systems in the CISE Directorate at National Science Foundation. With the Division of Computer and Network Systems, he works with the Cyber-Physical Systems and Computer Systems Research program. He is also a Professor of Computing and Information Sciences (CIS) at Kansas State University. From 2009 and 2014, he was the Head of CIS Department at Kansas State University. His research interests include real-time embedded systems, sensor networks, network protocols and distributed computing. His research has been funded by NSF, ARO, DARPA and Lockheed Martin.

Tho H. Nguyen is a AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the National Science Foundation in the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. Tho works primarily on the Cyber-Physical Systems Program and is particularly focusing on the NSF's activities in Urban Science. Tho is an active researcher in international development. He holds an academic appointment overseas and is PI on several projects funded by USAID and NGO's to develop technologies for development aid applications. Tho obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Washington (Seattle, WA) in Electrical Engineering in 2009. In addition to the AAAS Fellowship, Tho is formerly a Fulbright Fellow and an NSF IGERT Fellow.