I lead applied research that crosses the boundaries between academia, industry, and government, and I build the programs, partnerships, and people that sustain it. The work below spans research leadership, collaborations, translation, and service.
I lead applied research that crosses the boundaries between academia, industry, and government, and I build the programs, partnerships, and people that sustain it. The work below spans research leadership, collaborations, translation, and service.
Research Program Leadership
Founder & Director, Vision & AI Lab (VAIL), UT San Antonio. I set the research agenda for VAIL and lead a team of 9-12 graduate and undergraduate researchers working on deep learning, computer vision, and trustworthy AI for scientific and security applications.
Thrust co-Lead, Machine Learning & Deployment, MATRIX AI Consortium. I coordinate research across multiple groups within the consortium and help move AI from prototype toward deployment.
Principal Investigator. I lead multi-year, multi-institution research supported by the NSF, DOE, and DOD, including national-security work under the CONNECT Consortium for Nuclear Security Technologies. To date I have led over $11M in research funding as PI and co-PI.
Partnerships & Collaborations
My research is carried out in sustained collaboration with national laboratories and partner institutions, building and leading research across organizational boundaries: Los Alamos National Laboratory; Sandia National Laboratories; the CONNECT Consortium for Nuclear Security Technologies; and university partners including Georgia Tech, Texas State, Boise State, St. Mary's University, and UT San Antonio Physics and Engineering.
Research Translation & Innovation
I came to academia after a decade in industry as a machine learning researcher and enterprise software engineer, and that experience shapes how I lead research toward real-world impact. I hold 22 U.S. patents and am a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors.
Building Research Capacity & People
A central part of my leadership is growing the people and programs that strengthen the research enterprise. I lead CS-CURE, which brings more students into authentic computing research; I mentor graduate and undergraduate researchers; and I serve as faculty advisor to the ACM-W and GDSC student organizations. This work was recognized with the Council on Undergraduate Research's Mid-Career Faculty Mentor Award (2026). My forthcoming book, Getting Started with Research in Computing (Cambridge University Press, 2026), extends it to a broader audience.
Professional Service & Governance
My service reflects sustained leadership in
faculty governance, hiring, peer review, and the research community.
University & Departmental Leadership
Chair, Department Faculty Advisory Committee (DFAC), 2025–2026
Member, Department Faculty Review Advisory Committee (DRFAC), 2025–2026
Faculty Search Committees: AI + Education Cluster (2025–2026), Tenure-Track (2021–2022), Fixed-Term (2018–2020)
Graduate Studies Committee (2024–2025); Curriculum Committee (2022–2024)
Faculty mentor (FTT Mentor, 2022–2024); Course Coordinator, CS 3443 (2018–2026)
Research Community & Editorial Leadership
NSF CISE Review Panel, 2021
Area Chair, IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), 2022–2025
Standing journal reviewer: IEEE TPAMI (2026–), IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (2020–), SPIE Journals of Applied Remote Sensing (2019–) and Electronic Imaging (2015–), PLOS ONE (2025–)
Technical Program Committee: International Symposium on Visual Computing (2020–2025), IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Cyber Security, IEEE ICCE
Regular reviewer for leading venues including CVPR, NeurIPS, AAAI, ICASSP, IJCNN, and SIGCSE
I am a Senior Member of the ACM, IEEE, and NAI.