The Faculty Research Pitch allows MIDAS faculty affiliates to talk about their research with a new research community. We want to help members of our very diverse research community (>650 affiliates from all U-M schools and colleges) build collaboration and connect with students and fellow University of Michigan researchers.
Several previous research pitches have sparked new collaborations that resulted in funding support such as our Propelling Original Data Science (PODS) grants.
To give a research pitch, presenters need to be a MIDAS-affiliated faculty member (for those who would like to join MIDAS to become an affiliate, fill out the application form).
We are excited to showcase your research and to help you make connections in our community and across other institutions.
For questions, please contact Shahana Chumki, MIDAS Research Manager, [email protected].
2025 Speakers
Abby Hutson
Assistant Research Scientist, Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research
Numerical modeling of weather and climate in the Great Lakes region to support local forecasting and long-term projection.
Angela Kohlenberg
Assistant Professor of Technology and Operations, Ross School of Business
Analysis of dynamic matching markets (e.g., ride-hailing, organ exchange) using queueing theory to understand impatience and system performance.
Ashu Tripathi
Director, UM-NPDC, Life Sciences Institute
Nanofabrication, photonics, and development of micro/nano devices for life sciences applications.
Christoforos Mavrogiannis
Assistant Professor of Robotics, College of Engineering
Human-robot interaction, multi-agent navigation, and building trust in autonomous systems.
Dae Woong Ham
Assistant Professor of Technology and Operations, Ross School of Business
Behavioral and data-driven operations management, with a focus on service systems and analytics.
Frank Hu
Assistant Research Scientist, BMSP, School of Dentistry
Molecular biology of periodontal pathogens, host-pathogen interactions, and microbial pathogenesis.
John K. Fink
Professor of Neurology, Michigan Medicine
Genetic and molecular mechanisms of hereditary spastic paraplegia and other inherited neurological disorders.
Kayte Spector-Bagdady
Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Medical School
Bioethics and health policy with a focus on informed consent, secondary use of data, and clinical research ethics.
Kazuhiro Saitou
Professor of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering
Design automation, smart and sustainable manufacturing, and lifecycle engineering.
Kevin C. Zhou
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering
AI and machine learning for medical imaging, diagnostic tools, and healthcare applications.
Lars Junghans
Associate Professor, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
Building technology, sustainable design, and energy-efficient architecture systems.
Lauro Ojeda
Research Scientist, Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering
Inertial navigation, sensing systems, and biomechanics applications.
Muneesh Tewari
Professor of Internal Medicine, Medical School
Extracellular RNA biology, microRNAs as cancer biomarkers, and translational genomics.
Nicholas Henriksen
Professor of Spanish, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Spanish linguistics, sociophonetics, and studies of sound change in language.
Parth Vaishnav
Assistant Professor, School for Environment and Sustainability
Sustainable energy systems, life-cycle assessment, and climate change policy.
Q. Vera Liao
Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, College of Engineering
Responsible AI, human-centered AI, transparency, and explainability of machine learning systems.
Ravi Allada
Professor and Executive Director, Michigan Neuroscience Institute
Molecular and neural mechanisms underlying circadian rhythms and sleep regulation.
Tina Lasisi
Assistant Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Anthropology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Image analysis, population genetics, complex trait modeling.
Xiaofan Liang
Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planing
Land use and social implications of social, mobility, and digital connectivity infrastructure in cities; Application of network and AI methods to urban planning.
Yunus Zeytuncu
Professor of Mathematics, UM-Dearborn
Mathematical analysis, complex variables, and harmonic analysis.
Past Speakers
Peter Adriaens
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering
Data science tools for finance research.
SlidesRaed Al Kontar
Associate Professor of Industrial & Operations Engineering, College of Engineering
Data analytics and decision-making methodologies for connected products/systems.
SlidesSaif Benjaafar
Professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering; College of Engineering, Co-Director of Tauber Institute for Global Operations
Sustainable operations and innovative business models.
Srijita Das
Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Science (CIS), UM-Dearborn
Building sample-efficient machine learning models.
SlidesKamran Diba
Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, Michigan Medicine
Computational neuroscience of memory and the role of sleep.
SlidesDani Jones
Associate Research Scientist, Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research (CIGLR)
Data science and AI applications in physical limnology, weather forecasting, water cycle predictions, ecology, and observing system design
SlidesDavid Kwabi
Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering
Developing electrochemical devices for grid energy storage.
SlidesCarol Menassa
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering
Interconnections between human experience and the built environment.
SlidesNiccolo Meneghetti
Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Science (CIS), UM-Dearborn
Probabilistic databases, statistical relational learning and uncertain data management.
SlidesElle O’Brien
Lecturer IV & Research Investigator, School of Information
Scientific software development and generative AI code tools.
SlidesCyrus Omar
Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, College of Engineering
Designing modern user interfaces for modern programming languages.
SlidesBrian Perron
Professor, School of Social Work
Services research for mental and substance use disorders.
SlidesShai Revzen
Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, College of Engineering; Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Biologically inspired robotics.
SlidesSuraj Rampure
Lecturer III of Computer Science and Engineering, College of Engineering
Equipping all students with modern data science skills.
SlidesAlexander Rodríguez
Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, College of Engineering
Developing trustworthy AI systems for applications in environmental and community resilience and public health.
SlidesTomer Stern
Assistant Professor, School of Dentistry
Understanding morphogenesis using computational image analysis.
SlidesTerra Sztain
Assistant Professor, College of Pharmacy
Computational models for allosteric inhibitor design and protein engineering.
SlidesElyse Thulin
Assistant Research Professor, School of Public Health
Technology-Facilitated Anonymous/Confidential Reporting Systems (TFRS).
SlidesAngela Violi
Professor of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering
Molecular simulations and machine learning for nanoscience.
SlidesBingkai Wang
Assistant Professor of Biostatistics, School of Public Health
Causal inference for randomized clinical trials.
SlidesQiong Yang
Associate Professor of Biophysics, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Biophysics for understanding complex stochastic cellular and developmental processes in embryos.
SlidesJiayu Zhou
Associate Professor, School of Information
Machine learning and AI for health informatics.
SlidesElizabeth Bondi-Kelly
Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, College of Engineering
AI for social impact.
recordingAnne Draelos
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, College of Engineering and Michigan Medicine
Real-time machine learning for adaptive neuroscience applications.
recordingSean Johnson
Assistant Professor of Astronomy, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Galaxy evolution, quasars, the circumgalactic medium, the intergalactic medium.
recordingCam McLeman
Associate Professor of Mathematics and Applied Sciences, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Graph-Based Methods, Machine Learning, Mathematical and Statistical Modeling, Networks, Statistics.
recordingMajdi Radaideh
Assistant Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences, College of Engineering
Autonomous Control, Nuclear Reactor Design, Physics-informed Machine Learning, Uncertainty quantification, optimization.
recordingShai Revzen
Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, College of Engineering; Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Biologically Inspired Robotics and Dynamical Systems.
recordingStacy Rosenbaum
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Evolutionary causes and consequences of social behavior.
recordingNishil Talati
Assistant Research Scientist, Computer Science and Engineering, College of Engineering
Hardware-software co-design for efficient and secure data analytics.
recordingRunzi Wang
Assistant Professor, School for Environment and Sustainability
Built environment, landscape architecture, machine learning, stormwater management, stream water quality, urban hydrology.
recordingLiang Zhao
Associated Research Scientist, Climate and Space Science and Engineering, College of Engineering
Solar wind plasma, heliophysics.
recordingOmar Ahmed
Assistant Professor of Psychology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Recording and analysis of massive volumes of neural data to understand, predict and treat neuropsychiatric disorders.
slidesRaed Al Kontar
Assistant Professor of Industrial & Operations Engineering, College of Engineering
Federated and distributed data analytics.
slidesKaren Alofs
Assistant Professor, School for Environment and Sustainability
Fish ecology and environmental change using historical data, museum specimens, field surveys, lab experiments and models
slidesDallas Card
Assistant Professor, School of Information
Natural language processing for historical understanding.
slidesWalter Dempsey
Assistant Professor of Biostatistics, School of Public Health
Data analytic methods in mobile and digital health.
slidesEdgar Franco Vivianco
Assistant Professor of Political Science, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Handwritten text recognition models to analyze a corpus of interactions of Latin American colonial documents with the objective to analyze interactions of indigenous communities with the colonial state, the strategies they employed to resist exploitation, and their engagement with the legal system.
slidesAmie Gordon
Assistant Professor of Psychology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Health and well-being in the context of close relationships utilizing experimental, observational, survey, dyadic, daily experience, longitudinal, and physiological methods.
slidesRahul Ladhania
Assistant Professor, School of Public Health
Machine Learning for causal inference in behavior science and public health.
slidesBrian Lin
Assistant Research Scientist, University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI), College of Engineering
Using data-driven methods to explore driver and vulnerable road user’s behavior and interaction with automated vehicles.
slidesAnthony Million
Research Investigator, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), Institute for Social Research
Investigating if pre-registration systems need discipline-specific design features and what these features might be.
slidesMatthew VanEseltine
Assistant Research Scientist, Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research
The science of science, team science, early careers in scientific research, gender and science, and open science with restricted data.
slidesJoshua Welch
Assistant Professor, Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, Michigan Medicine
Machine learning for single-cell genomics.
slidesParamveer Dhillon
Assistant Professor, School of Information
Recommendations for social good.
recordingRobin Fowler
Lecturer of Engineering Education Research and Technical Communication, College of Engineering
Using AI to help facilitate equitable and inclusive teamwork environments.
recordingAyumi Fujisaki-Manome
Assistant Research Scientist, School for Environment and Sustainability
Supprting decision-making for a vital waterway in the Great Lakes by machine learning model-based lake ice for testing.
recordingRobert Manduca
Assistant Professor of Sociology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Modeling urban economies and studying consumption patterns.
recordingMurali Mani
Professor of Computer Science, UM-Flint
Ethical recommendations.
recordingNathan Martin
Associate Professor of Music Theory, School of Music, Theatre & Dance
Computational and empirical approaches to music theory.
recordingElle O’Brien
Research Investigator, School of Information
Machine learning and managing complexity.
recordingYulia Sevryugina
Senior Associate Librarian, Library Research – Science and Engineering, University Library
Trends in scholarly publishing.
recordingAnthony Vanky
Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
Can big data from digitally enabled online platforms reveal patterns of gentrification and demographic change?
recordingPeter Adriaens
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering
Digital finance and blockchain tokenization.
recordingSyagnik Banerjee
Professor of Management and Marketing, UM-Flint
Measuring social media manipulation.
recordingAlbert Berahas
Assistant Professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering, College of Engineering
Fast, adaptive, scalable and robust algorithms for large scale nonlinear optimization.
recordingKevyn Collins-Thompson
Associate Professor, School of Information
AI and education.
recordingSalar Fattahi
Assistant Professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering, College of Engineering
Galaxy evolution, quasars, the circumgalactic medium, the intergalactic medium.
recordingJaerock Kwon
Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UM-Dearborn
Bio-inspired intelligent systems.
recordingRobert Manduca
Assistant Professor of Sociology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Modeling urban economies, optimizing the air travel network, and consumption.
recordingMurali Mani
Professor of Computer Science, UM-Flint
Secure Query processing in the cloud using fully honomorphic encryption (FHE).
recordingMark Van Oyen
Professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering, College of Engineering
Machine learning optimization for COVID-19 hospital operations.
recordingAtul Prakash
Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, College of Engineering
Robust machine learning.
recordingGreg Rybarczyk
Associate Professor of Geography and Planning and Environment, UM-Flint
Examining travel behaviors and “third spaces” within urban environments.
recordingPerry Samson
Professor of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, College of Engineering
Contextual linkaging for undergraduate education.
recordingYulia Sevryugina
Senior Associate Librarian, Library Research – Science and Engineering, University Library
Trends in scholarly publishing.
recording