Hema A Murthy is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Madras. Her research interests are primarily focused on Signal Processing-guided Machine Learning, with applications in speech, music, and brain signals. She has served as a meta-reviewer for ISMIR, General Chair for ISMIR 2022, Technical Program Chair for INTERSPEECH 2018, and was a member of the ISCA Board (2017-2021). Currently, she is an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Language Processing. She leads a consortium of 24 institutions working on "Speech Technologies in Indian Languages." She is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (2017), a Fellow of the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) (2022), and a Fellow of the Asia Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (2023).

Website: www.cse.iitm.ac.in/~hema

Shrikanth (Shri) Narayanan is a University Professor and holder of the Niki and Max Nikias Chair in Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). He serves as the inaugural Vice President for Presidential Initiatives on USC's Senior Leadership Team. Shri is a Professor in the Signal and Image Processing Institute of USC’s Ming Hsieh Electrical & Computer Engineering department, with joint appointments as Professor in Computer Science, Linguistics, Psychology, Neuroscience, Pediatrics, and Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. He is also the inaugural director of the Ming Hsieh Institute, a Research Director for the Information Sciences Institute at USC, and a Visiting Faculty Researcher at Google. He held the inaugural Viterbi Professorship in Engineering at USC (2007-2016). He was also a Research Area Director of the Integrated Media Systems Center, an NSF Engineering Research Center at USC, and the Research Principal for the USC Pratt and Whitney Institute for Collaborative Engineering, a unique partnership between academia and industry (2003-2007).

Shri Narayanan is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA), the Association for Psychological Science (APS), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and the Association for the Advancement of Affective Computing (AAAC). He is also a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow. Shri is a member of the professional honour societies Tau Beta Pi, Phi Kappa Phi, and Eta Kappa Nu.

Shri Narayanan has received numerous honours and awards, including the 2025 IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award, the 2024 Edward J. McCluskey Technical Achievement Award from the IEEE Computer Society, the 2023 ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement, and the 2023 IEEE SPS Claude Shannon-Harry Nyquist Technical Achievement Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society for contributions to spoken language processing technologies and their societal applications. He also received the 2020 ACM ICMI Sustained Accomplishment Award. His research publications have earned the 2023 Richard Deswarte Prize in Digital History (for a paper published in Digital Humanities Quarterly with Gabor Toth, Tim Hempel, and Krishna Somandepalli), a 2018 ISCA Best Journal Paper Award (for a paper published in Computer Speech and Language Journal with Ming Li and Kyu Han), the Ten-Year Technical Impact Award from ACM ICMI in 2014, a 2009 Best Transactions (Journal) Paper Award (with Chul Min Lee), and a 2005 Best Transactions Paper Award (with Alexandros Potamianos) from the IEEE Signal Processing Society for papers published in the IEEE Transactions on Speech and Audio Processing.

Shri Narayanan’s interdisciplinary research focuses on human-centred sensing, imaging, signal processing, and machine intelligence, with a special emphasis on human communication, interaction, emotions, and behaviour. His work spans speech, audio, language, multimodal, and biomedical applications, with direct societal relevance in defence, security, health, media, and the arts. His laboratory is supported by federal agencies (NSF, NIH, DARPA, IARPA, ONR, Army, and DHS) and various foundation and industry grants. He has published over 1,000 papers and holds 19 U.S. patents. His research and inventions have led to technology commercialization, including through startups he co-founded: Behavioral Signals Technologies, focused on the telecommunication services and AI-based conversational assistance industry, and Lyssn, focused on mental health care delivery, treatment, and quality assurance.

Website: https://sail.usc.edu/people/shri.html

Mriganka Sur is the Newton Professor of Neuroscience at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and Director of the Simons Center for the Social Brain at MIT, which he founded after 15 years as head of MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Dr. Sur studies the organization, plasticity, and dynamics of the cerebral cortex using experimental and theoretical approaches. He has discovered fundamental principles by which networks of the cerebral cortex are wired during development and change dynamically during learning. His laboratory has identified gene networks underlying cortical plasticity and pioneered high-resolution imaging methods to study cells, synapses, and circuits of the intact brain. His group has demonstrated novel mechanisms underlying disorders of brain development and proposed innovative strategies for treating such disorders. His laboratory has discovered core functional rules of inhibitory-excitatory neuronal circuits in the cerebral cortex and revealed dynamics of information processing across widespread cortical areas. The impact of these discoveries, which address long-standing questions about computations underlying learning, decision-making, and perception-action transformations, ranges from understanding dysregulation in brain disorders to developing brain architectures for next-generation AI.

Dr. Sur received his B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Vanderbilt University, Nashville. He has received numerous awards and honours, most recently the Krieg Cortical Discoverer Prize, and has delivered distinguished lectures worldwide. He has trained over 80 doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows and received awards for outstanding teaching and mentoring. At MIT, he has been recognized with the Sherman Fairchild and Newton Chairs. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of the UK, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the World Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy, and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.

Website: https://picower.mit.edu/mriganka-sur

Dr. Rajeswari Aghoram is a faculty member in the Department of Neurology at the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), Pondicherry. Dr. Aghoram holds both MD and DM degrees, reflecting her specialization in Neurology. Her primary area of interest includes Cognitive Neurosciences and EEG Electrophysiology. With a notable publication record, she has contributed to research in various aspects of neurology.

In addition to her academic pursuits, Dr. Aghoram actively participates in clinical work, conducting special clinics for Neurodegenerative Diseases, General Neurology, the Neuromuscular Clinic, and the Epilepsy Clinic. This highlights her commitment to addressing a range of neurological conditions and providing specialized care. Based in India, Dr. Rajeswari Aghoram continues to make valuable contributions to the field of neurology through her clinical practice, research endeavours, and dedication to advancing patient care.

Website: https://jipmer.edu.in/users/drrajeswari

Richard Leahy holds the Arthur G. Settle Trust Endowment for the USC Leonard Silverman Chair and is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Radiology at the University of Southern California (USC). He earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Newcastle, England, in 1984. Following this, he joined USC as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering from 1985 to 1991. Since 1989, he has served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging. Between 1991 and 1997, he was an Associate Professor at USC before becoming a full Professor in Electrical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Radiology in 1997. He is also the Director of the Signal and Image Processing Institute at USC, a position he has held since 1997.

In 2000, he took a sabbatical as a Visiting Professor at the Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging at UCLA’s School of Medicine. Since 2001, he has been an Associate Member of both the Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging and the Laboratory of Neuroimaging at UCLA. Additionally, he co-chaired the International Conference on Information Processing in Medical Imaging (IPMI 2001), held in Davis, California.

Website: https://neuroimage.usc.edu/neuro/Members