Thom Mason became the twelfth Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory and President of Triad National Security, LLC, in November 2018. The Laboratory is a principal contributor to the U.S. Department of Energy mission to maintain the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, using innovative science and technology to enhance global nuclear security and protect the world. Los Alamos has an annual operating budget of over $3 billion, roughly 13,000 employees, and a nearly 40-square-mile site featuring some of the most specialized scientific equipment and supporting infrastructure in the world.

For the past 30 years, Mason has been involved in the design and construction of scientific instrumentation and facilities and the application of nuclear, computing, and materials sciences to solve important challenges in energy and national security. Most recently, Mason was the Senior Vice President for Global Laboratory Operations at Battelle where he had responsibility for governance and strategy across the six national laboratories that Battelle manages or co-manages. Prior to joining Battelle, Mason worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for 19 years, including 10 years as the laboratory director.

John Sarrao manages the Laboratory’s extensive science, technology, and engineering capabilities in support of the Laboratory’s national security mission. Before becoming deputy director, Sarrao was the Principal Associate Director for Science, Technology, and Engineering and served as the Associate Director for Theory, Simulation, and Computation. He has also held a number of leadership positions within the Lab’s materials community. Sarrao’s primary research interest is in the synthesis and characterization of correlated electron systems, especially actinide materials emphasizing plutonium physics research. He has worked in advanced-materials design and discovery, and stewarded the Lab’s high-performance computing resources and simulation capabilities. Sarrao was the 2013 winner of the Department of Energy’s E.O. Lawrence Award, and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Sarrao received a Ph.D. and an M.S. in physics from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a B.S. in physics from Stanford University.

Watch Stuart Russell's Talk at 2021 HTT Symposium

Stuart Russell is a professor of computer science at UC Berkeley, where he is the Smith-Zadeh Chair in Engineering and Director of the Center for Human-Compatible AI. He is a recipient of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Computer, and Thought Award, and from 2012 to 2014 occupied the Chaire Blaise Pascal in Paris. He is an Honorary Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, and a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His book (with Peter Norvig), Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, is the standard text in AI used in 1,500 universities in 135 countries. His research covers a wide range of topics in AI with an emphasis on the long-term future of AI and its relation to humanity. He has developed a new, global, seismic monitoring system for the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and is currently working to ban lethal autonomous weapons.

Watch Andrew Moore's Talk at 2021 HTT Symposium

Andrew Moore is a distinguished computer scientist with expertise in ML and robotics. At Google, he is Vice President, Engineering, and in 2019 he became General Manager for AI and Industry Solutions in Google Cloud. In 2006, Moore was the founding director of Google’s Pittsburgh engineering office and worked there until 2014. He then became the dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Moore's research interests encompass the field of “big data”— applying statistical methods and mathematical formulas to massive quantities of information, ranging from web searches to astronomy to medical records, to identify patterns and extract meaning from that data. His past research includes improving the ability of robots and other automated systems to sense the world around them and respond appropriately.

Watch Fei Fei Li's Talk at 2021 HTT Symposium

Fei Li is the Sequoia Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University and Denning Co-Director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI). Her research includes cognitively-inspired AI, ML, deep learning, computer vision, and AI + healthcare. Before co-founding HAI, she served as director of Stanford’s AI Lab. During her Stanford sabbatical (2017 to 2018), Li was a vice president at Google and Chief Scientist of AI/ML at Google Cloud. Prior to joining Stanford, she was on faculty at Princeton University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is also a co-founder and chairperson of the board of the national nonprofit called AI4ALL, focusing on training diverse K-12 students of underprivileged communities to become tomorrow’s AI leaders. Li serves on the National AI Research Resource Task Force commissioned by Congress and the White House, and is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She holds a B.A. in physics with high honors from Princeton, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology.

Watch Philip Sabes' Talk at 2021 HTT Symposium

Philip Sabes is a neuroscientist and neural engineer who has been working on neurotechnology startups for the past four years. Sabes is also Professor Emeritus of Physiology at UC San Francisco. Sabes has undergraduate degrees in physics from Washington University in St. Louis, and in mathematics from Cambridge University (Trinity College) where he was Marshall Scholar. He received his Ph.D. in Michael Jordan’s lab at the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, focusing on motor neuroscience and machine learning. He then conducted postdoctoral research with Richard Andersen at Caltech, where Sabes trained as a neurophysiologist. At UC San Francisco, the Sabes Lab used neurophysiological, computational, and behavioral tools to discover how sensory feedback drives movement control. The lab also developed new technologies for brain-machine interfacing (BMI), including the first demonstration of multi-electrode micro stimulation for real-time sensory feedback during movement. The lab also developed the novel sewing-machine approach to neural interfacing (in collaboration with Michel Maharbiz’s lab at UC Berkeley), allowing arrays of micron-scale, thin-film devices to be implanted at individually targeted locations in the brain. In 2017, Sabes retired from UC San Francisco to help launch Neuralink Corp, where he continued work on BMI and the sewing machine approach. In 2020, he moved to the Seattle area to help create Starfish Neuroscience, LLC, a new startup focused on BMI and neuromodulation.

Watch Lindsey Sheppard's Talk at 2021 HTT Symposium

Lindsey Sheppard is a fellow with the International Security Program at CSIS, where she focuses on the nexus of emerging technologies and national security for the U.S. and allied and partner nations. Her research areas include AI, ML, autonomous systems, defense innovation policy, and technology ecosystems. Sheppard is a frequent writer and invited speaker on the global state of emerging technology application to the defense and intelligence missions. Sheppard contributes expertise in computational modeling and simulation, system architecture and design, and GPS-denied operations from her prior experience in defense research and development. Before joining CSIS (2018), she was a member of the technical staffs at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory and the Georgia Tech Research Institute. During this time, she was the programmatic and technical systems engineering lead on various software development projects. Sheppard’s work supported U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army procurement and technology development efforts to support operations in contested environments. She holds an M.S. and a B.S. in aerospace engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Watch Andrew Maynard's Talk at 2021 HTT Symposium

Andrew Maynard is a scientist, author, and leading expert on emerging technologies and their responsible and ethical development and use. Maynard is a professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at ASU, and Associate Dean for Curricula and Student Success in the College of Global Futures. He is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research’s President’s Research Council, and a regular contributor to the World Economic Forum/Scientific American annual list of top ten emerging technologies. His most recent book, Future Rising: A Journey from the Past to the Edge of Tomorrow, explores our collective relationship with the future and our responsibility to it.