Li Deng received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was an assistant professor (1989-1992), tenured associate professor (1992-1996) and Full Professor (1996-1999) at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. In 1999, he joined Microsoft Research, Redmond, USA, where currently he leads R&D of application-focused deep learning as Partner Research Manager of its Deep Learning Technology Center. Since 2000, he has also been Affiliate Full Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle. Prior to joining Microsoft, he also conducted research and taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ATR Interpreting Telecom. Research Lab. (Kyoto, Japan), and HKUST. He has been granted over 70 US or international patents. In the general areas of audio/speech/language technology, machine learning, signal and information processing, he has published over 300 refereed papers in leading journals and conferences, and authored or co-authored 5 books including the latest books on Deep Learning: Methods and Applications and on Automatic Speech Recognition: A Deep-Learning Approach (Springer). He is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, a Fellow of the IEEE, and a Fellow of the International Speech Communication Association. He served on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (2008-2010). More recently, he served as Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (2009-2011), as General Chair of the IEEE ICASSP-2013, and as Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing (2012-2014). His technical work since 2009 and leadership in industry-scale deep learning with colleagues have created high impact in speech recognition and other areas of information processing. The work by him and the team he manages has been in use in major Microsoft speech products and in several text/data-related products, and is recognized by the 2013 IEEE SPS Best Paper Award, Microsoft Goldstar and Technology Transfer Awards. His recent research interests and activities have been focused on deep learning and machine intelligence applied to large-scale text analysis and to speech/language/image multimodal processing.

Panos Nasiopoulos earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1980), Greece, and his bachelor’s (1985), master’s (1988), and Ph.D.  (1994) degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada. He is a professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the former Director of ICICS and the Master of Software Systems at UBC. Before joining UBC, he was the President of Daikin Comtec US and Executive Vice President of Sonic Solutions. He is a registered professional engineer in British Columbia, a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and has been an active member of the Standards Council of Canada, MPEG, ACM and IEEE.

Andreas Savakis is Professor of Computer Engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), where he served as department head of Computer Engineering from 2000-2011.  He received the B.S. (Summa Cum Laude) and M.S. degrees from Old Dominion University and the Ph.D. from North Carolina State University, all in Electrical Engineering.  Before joining RIT he was with the Eastman Kodak Research Labs.  His research interests include object detection and tracking, activity and expression recognition, scene understanding, mobile processing, and high performance implementations.  His research has generated over 100 publications and 12 patents.  He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Electronic Imaging.  Andreas is the recipient of the IEEE Third Millennium Medal, the NYSTAR Technology Transfer Award for Economic Impact, the IEEE Region 1 Award for Outstanding Teaching for contributions to Education in Computer Engineering and Multimedia, the RIT Trustees Scholarship Award, and the American Council on Education (ACE) Fellowship.  

Anthony Vetro is a Deputy Director at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He also manages a group that is responsible for research in the areas of digital video coding and processing, information security, sensing technologies, and speech/audio processing. He has contributed to the transfer and development of several technologies to Mitsubishi products, including digital television receivers and displays, surveillance and camera monitoring systems, automotive equipment, as well as satellite imaging systems. He has published more than 150 papers and has been an active member of the MPEG and ITU-T video coding standardization committees for a number of years. He is also active in various IEEE conferences, technical committees and editorial boards. Current or past roles include Editorial Board of IEEE Signal Processing Magazine and IEEE Multimedia, Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology and IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, Chair of TC on Multimedia Signal Processing of the IEEE Signal Processing Society, and Steering Committee of IEEE Transactions on Multimedia. Anthony received the B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Polytechnic University, in Brooklyn, NY, and is a Fellow of the IEEE.

Michael Wei has over 15 years’ experience on leading cutting-edge research on cognitive computing, machine learning, advanced analytics and intelligence technologies. His main interest is how to utilize intelligence technology to improve social productivity and enrich personal life. He had been Product Management for IBM infrastructure in support of Cloud and Watson. Now he is with Huawei Central Research Institute responsible for general technology strategy and intelligence related research initiatives. Besides, he had multiple years experience with consulting firm, A.T.Kearney, on IT strategy related to data analytics and business digitization. Michael has a track record of successfully discovering novel technologies, incubating new teams, and managing innovations towards sustainable business success.  Michael received its MBA from UT@Austin, Master degree in Electrical Engineering from USC, and Bachelor degree from Shanghai Jiaotong University.

Khaled El-Maleh is a Senior Director of Technology in the IP Department leading the Multimedia Technology team and related Multimedia and User Experience IP Strategy areas. Dr. El-Maleh’s areas of expertise and interests include: design, implementation and quality evaluation of mobile multimedia systems, data mining/analytics, human-computer interfaces, computer vision applications, innovation and industry-university technology transfer. He is a technologist and strategist with focus on entrepreneurship & Innovation.

Khaled joined Qualcomm in 2000 as a Senior Engineer working on multimedia technology in Qualcomm Chip Business (QCT). Prior to joining IP Department in 2007, Khaled contributed to the early design of Qualcomm voice and video products. Khaled received Double Majors Bachelor degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering and in Applied Math from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals of Saudi Arabia, and M. Eng. and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from McGill University, Canada. He is an accomplished inventor with more than 200 US and international patents.