Waterloo.AI and WIN Joint Symposium on AI for Materials Discovery

Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Waterloo

Scott Hopkins is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Waterloo. His research interests lie at the intersection of chemistry and physics for charged molecules and clusters, where he applies experimental, theoretical, and machine-learning methods to deduce molecular properties. Dr. Hopkins has received several awards for his research, including the Keith Laidler Award of the Canadian Society for Chemistry and the PerkinElmer Award of the Canadian Society for Analytical Sciences and Spectroscopy. Dr. Hopkins has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles in highly regarded journals, including the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Angewandte Chemie, and Nature Communications, and he has co-authored six patents. He is the project lead and director for the new Canadian free electron laser facility that is being built at the University of Waterloo.

Applied Mathematics, Faculty of Math, University of Waterloo

Mohammad Kohandel is an Associate Professor and head of the Mathematical Medicine Laboratory at the Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Waterloo, and a founding member of the Centre for Mathematical Medicine at the Fields Institute. He has established very fruitful collaborations with leading scientists and clinicians and has co-organized numerous international workshops and conferences. To date, he has published over 70 research articles, and recently in very high rank journals Nature Communications and ACS Nano, and has supervised dozens of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as Postdoctoral Fellows. He is a co-founder and CEO of MATHONCO BIOTECH INC, Ontario.

Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Waterloo

Conrard Giresse Tetsassi Feugmo is currently serving as an assistant professor in chemistry at the University of Waterloo. He holds both a BSc and MSc in Chemistry from the University of Yaoundé I in Cameroon. Continuing his academic journey, he pursued further studies in Belgium, where he achieved a Specialized Master's degree in Nanotechnologies from the Louvain School of Engineering, followed by a PhD in Computational Chemistry from the University of Namur. After completing his PhD, Dr. Feugmo gained valuable experience as a postdoctoral associate at the University of Western Ontario. Prior to joining the University of Waterloo, he worked as a Research Officer at the NRC's Advanced Materials Research Facility in Mississauga, utilizing his expertise in material science, nanotechnologies, and machine learning to develop a materials acceleration platform focused on sustainability-related domains.

Postdoctoral Fellow at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Visiting Researcher at the University of Waterloo

Sriram Ganapathi Subramanian is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Vector Institute. His research focuses on multi-agent systems, particularly addressing challenges like scale, non-stationarity, communication, and sample inefficiency in multi-agent learning. His work intersects Reinforcement Learning and Game Theory, with a keen interest in bridging the gap between the theoretical understanding and empirical advancements in Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning. Sriram’s long-term goal is to develop scalable algorithms that solve real-world problems using multi-agent learning.Before his postdoctoral role, Sriram completed his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He also holds a Master’s degree from the same department and a Bachelor’s degree in Geomatics Engineering from Anna University, Chennai.

School of Public Health, Professional Practice Centre in Health Systems, Faculty of Health, University of Waterloo 

Helen Chen is an Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo and serves as the Director of the Professional Practice Centre in Health Systems. She holds cross appointments in Statistics, Actuarial Science, and Computer Science. Her research focuses on artificial intelligence (AI) for public health, real-world evidence, health data quality and analytics, generative AI, and synthetic data. Helen also explores AI for learning health systems, with a strong interest in health data standards, security, and patient consent. With a PhD in Computational Biomechanics from the University of Waterloo and degrees in Engineering Mechanics from Tsinghua University, her teaching areas include health informatics and AI applications in public health.

Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Waterloo 

Mark Crowley is an Associate Professor in the Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence group in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia and a B.A. from York University. Crowley’s research focuses on the intersection of Machine Learning, Optimization, and Probabilistic Modelling, with a particular interest in spatial dynamics and large-scale data challenges. He collaborates with researchers in areas like sustainable forest management, ecology, and resource economics. An advocate for interdisciplinary Computational Sustainability, he is also passionate about the societal impact of AI and democratic reform.