Speakers

Professor Booth is an assistant professor working with the Department of Computer Science at the University of Memphis.  His research interests span topics in machine learning, signal processing, algorithmic bias/fairness, and data collection and annotation methods, especially as they pertain to human behavior and experience modeling.  He has a diverse background in industry working as a video game and serious game developer and as a R&D engineer on various problems in robotics, computer vision, human-computer interaction systems, and geospatial visualization. Prior to joining, he completed his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Southern California and worked as a postdoctoral scholar in the areas of human-centered and ethical computing at the University of Colorado Boulder. Dr. Booth's research focuses on understanding the complex dynamics of human behaviors, interactions, thinking, and emotions in different contexts.  His interdisciplinary work combines theories and knowledge from machine learning, psychology, signal processing, game design, and ethics and aims to advance social good through human-centered computing. 

Prof. Etemad is an Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Queen's University. He holds an endowed professorship of Mitchell Professor in AI for Human Sensing & Understanding. His main area of research is human-centered machine learning and deep learning. Dr. Etemad received his M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, in 2009 and 2014, respectively. Prior to joining Queen’s, he held several industry positions as lead scientist. He has published over 170 papers in top venues in the area (e.g., NeurIPS, ICLR, AAAI, CVPR, T-PAMI, ECCV, ICCV, etc.), is a co-inventor of 10 patents, and has given over 30 invited talks. Dr. Etemad is an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing and IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence. He has served as a PC member/reviewer, and has held organizing roles at various venues. He has received a number of awards including Prize for Excellence in Research, Supervisor of the Year Award, Instructor of the Year Award, and several Best Paper Awards (e.g., at ACM ICMI'23). Dr. Etemad’s lab and research program have been funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada, Ontario Centers of Excellence (OCE), Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), Mitacs, and other organizations, as well as the private sector. He has held visiting faculty positions at the University of Cambridge and Google Research.