News Brief: Alexis Battle and Rama Chellappa named co-directors of DSAI
Effective July 1, Alexis Battle and Rama Chellappa will serve as interim co-directors of the Johns Hopkins Data Science and AI Institute. Mark Dredze, currently DSAI’s director of research for foundations of AI, will transition to become interim deputy director.
“Rama, Alexis, and Mark have been integral to DSAI’s progress and the momentum we have built. Not only are they top experts in their fields, but they also are skilled at building community. Under their continued leadership, I am confident that we will attract top faculty and students, and our faculty’s impact on society will be significant in areas from policy and research advances to new technologies that improve people’s lives,” said Ed Schlesinger, Benjamin T. Rome Dean.
Battle is a professor of biomedical engineering and holds secondary appointments in computer science and the Department of Genetic Medicine at the School of Medicine. She is also the director of the Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare. Her work focuses on unlocking the secrets of the human genome by analyzing large-scale genomic sequencing data to understand the impact of genetic variation on the human body.
Chellappa, a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in biomedical engineering and electrical and computer engineering and chief scientist at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Assured Autonomy, is a pioneer in the area of artificial intelligence. His work in computer vision, pattern recognition, and machine learning have had a profound impact on areas including biometrics, smart cars, forensics, and 2D and 3D modeling of faces, objects, and terrain.
Anchored in the Whiting School of Engineering, the Data Science and AI Institute will bring together world-class experts in artificial intelligence, machine learning, biomedical engineering, applied mathematics, computer engineering, and computer science to fuel data-driven discovery in support of research activities across the institution. Affiliated faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows will work together to apply machine learning and artificial intelligence systems across a range of critical and emerging fields, from neuroscience and precision medicine to climate resilience and sustainability, public sector innovation, and the social sciences and humanities. In all, 80 new affiliated faculty will join JHU’s Whiting School of Engineering to support the institute’s pursuits, in addition to 30 new Bloomberg Distinguished Professors with substantial cross-disciplinary expertise to ensure the impact of the new institute is felt across the university.