The Subterranean Macroscope Plenary Speakers
November 1st - 2nd, 2017
Nick Dokoozlian
Vice President, Viticulture, Chemistry and Enology
E&J Gallo Winery
Nick Dokoozlian is Vice President, Viticulture, Chemistry and Enology at E. & J. Gallo Winery in Modesto, California. His group is responsible for research in the areas of grape and wine production, including the development of growing practices which improve the yield and quality of grapes, the development and application of grape and wine chemical metrics as well as research on the impacts of processing, fermentation and aging practices on wine composition and sensory characteristics. He is also responsible for managing external research collaborations and relations with universities and other research agencies.
Jerry Hatfield
Laboratory Director and Supervisory Plant Physiologist
National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment
Dr. Jerry L. Hatfield is the Laboratory Director of the USDA-ARS National Laboratory for Agriculture in Ames, Iowa, and co-PI on the Agriculture Model Improvement and Intercomparison Project. He graduated from Kansas State University in 1971 with a B.S., University of Kentucky in 1972 with a M.S., and in 1975 with a Ph.D. from Iowa State University in Agricultural Climatology. HIs personal research focuses on quantifying the interactions among the components of the soil-plant-atmosphere system to quantify resilience of cropping systems to climate change and development of techniques to enhance decision-making for agriculture. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America and Past-President of the American Society of Agronomy and member of the American Meterological Society, American Geophysical Union and Soil and Water Conservation Society. He is the recipient of numerous awards and was elected to the ARS Hall of Fame in 2014 for his research on improving agriculture and environmental quality and the Hugh Hammond Bennett award for his national and international work on conservation. He is the author or co-author of 443 refereed publications and the editor of 17 monographs.
Rajakkannu Mutharasan
Frank A. Fletcher Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering
Drexel University
Raj Mutharasan received his bachelor's in chemical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Madras (India) and Ph.D from Drexel University in 1973. After a postdoctoral year at the University of Toronto in Canada, he joined Drexel University on the faculty and has been there since 1974. Currently, he is the Frank A. Fletcher Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering. During 2014-2017 he served as the Program Director of Nanobiosensing at the NSF. He has served in many administrative capacities at Drexel including as the Interim Dean of College of Engineering (1997-2000). He led Engineering Curriculum Innovation Program – a seven university coalition on engineering education - funded by the National Science Foundation during 1995-2004. He is a Fellow of AIChE (2000), Fellow of AIMBE (2006) and Fellow of the AAAS (2011) and serves on the Editorial Board of Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology. His research interests are in biosensors and process biotechnology. He has published extensively in the areas of biosensors, bioreactors and materials processing. At Drexel, Raj directs research on various biosensor platforms for detecting pathogens, proteins, and DNA. His biosensors research has been funded by the NSF, USDA, EPA, Pennsylvania Department of Health, and by the Department of Homeland Security. Mutharasan’s inventions have led to multiple patents and have been licensed to two start-up companies.
Jo Handelsman
Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Vilas Research Professor
Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor
Dr. Jo Handelsman is currently the Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as a Vilas Research Professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. Previously, she served for President Obama for three years as the Associate Director for Science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). She received her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Molecular Biology and has served on the faculties of UW-Madison and Yale University. Dr. Handelsman has authored over 100 papers, 30 editorials and 3 books. She is responsible for groundbreaking studies in microbiology and gender in science.
Ian Foster
Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor
Department of Computer Science, University of Chicago
Distinguished Fellow, MCS Division
Senior Scientist, MCS Division, Argonne National Laboratory
Ian Foster is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago and a Senior Scientist, Distinguished Fellow, and director of the Data Sciences and Learning division at Argonne National Laboratory. Originally from New Zealand, he has lived in Chicago for longer than he likes to admit. Ian has a long record of research contributions in high-performance computing, distributed systems, and data-driven discovery. He has also led US and international projects that have produced widely used software systems and scientific computing infrastructures. He has published hundreds of scientific papers and eight books on these and other topics. Ian is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the British Computer Society. His awards include the British Computer Society's Lovelace Medal, the IEEE Tsutomu Kanai award, and honorary doctorates from CINVESTAV, Mexico, and the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
Mehmet Can Vuran
Susan J. Rosowski Associate Professor
Cyber-Physical Networking Laboratory
Computer Science and Engineering
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Mehmet Can (John) Vuran his B.Sc. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Bilkent University , Ankara, Turkey in 2002, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Broadband and Wireless Networking Laboratory, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA. in 2004 and 2007, respectively. Currently, he is the Susan J. Rosowski Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Dr. Vuran was recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher by Thomson Reuters "in recognition of ranking among the top 1% of researchers for most cited documents in Computer Science". Dr. Vuran was awarded an NSF CAREER award for the project "Bringing Wireless Sensor Networks Underground'" and is the co-author of Wireless Sensor Networks textbook.
Hendrik Hamann (Keynote)
Distinguished Researcher and Research Manager for Physical Analytics,
IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
Dr. Hendrik F. Hamann is currently a Senior Manager and Distinguished Research Staff Member at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY. He received his PhD from the University of Göttingen in Germany. In 1999 he joined the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, where is leading the Physical Analytics and cognitive Internet of Things program. Hamann’s current research interest includes sensor networks, sensor-based physical modeling, machine-learning, artificial intelligence as well as big data technologies. Hamann has authored and co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers and holds over 110 patents and has over 100 pending patent applications. Dr. Hamann is an IBM Master Inventor, a member to the IBM Academy of Technology and has served on governmental committees such as the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation and as an industrial advisor to Universities. He won several awards including the 2016 AIP Prize for Industrial Applications of Physics. He is a member of the American Physical Society (APS), Optical Society of America (OSA), The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the NY Academy of Sciences.
