Our Team

We are UCSD faculty, staff, and students representing Psychology, Computer Science & Engineering, Cognitive Science, Halicioğlu Data Science Institute, Education Studies, Math, and Bioengineering.

Judith Fan is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and is currently leading Pathways2AI. Research in her lab aims to develop computational models that explain how people learn, communicate, and solve problems. She grew up in Phoenix, AZ, enjoys stories about time travel, and aspires to one day be able to play more than one riff on the ukelele. Find out more about Dr. Fan's research: https://cogtoolslab.github.io/

Taylor Berg-Kirkpatrick is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science and Engineering. His research group works on natural language processing and machine learning, focusing on unsupervised methods for deciphering hidden structure. We develop techniques for analyzing various kinds of human data, including natural language -- but also diverse sources like early modern books, handwritten text, historical ciphers, and music. Find out more about Dr. Berg-Kirkpatrick's research: https://icebergnlp.github.io/ 

Alex Cloninger is an Assistant Professor in Mathematics and the Halicioglu Data Science Institute. He works on computational models for learning similarities between data, and using these similarity measures to solve various scientific problems. Find out more about Dr. Cloninger's research:  https://ccom.ucsd.edu/~acloninger/index.html 

Gary Cottrell is a Professor in Computer Science & Engineering. His research group studies neural networks and other computational models applied to problems in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, engineering, and biology. Find out more about Dr. Cottrell's research: https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~gary/ 

 Virginia de Sa Is a Professor in Cognitive Science and the Halicioglu Data Science Institute. Her research group uses computational modeling, psychophysics studies, and machine learning to learn more about visual and multi-sensory perception. Find out more about Dr. de Sa's research: https://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~desa/

Amy Eguchi is an Associate Teaching Professor of Computer Science Education in the Department of Education Studies at UC San Diego. Amy focuses on using robotics as a learning tool with K-12 students. She works on various projects to promote coding and the understanding and interests in Artificial Intelligence among underrepresented populations of students. Sony’s Aibo (https://us.aibo.com/) brought her into the field of educational robotics and she has first and second generations of AIBOs in her office!

Art Lopez District TOSA for Computer Science, Sweetwater Union High School District/Coding Our Future, Program Manager, UCSD-CREATE/President - CSTA - San Diego Chapter/9-12 Representative, Board of Directors Computer Science Teachers Association. Art has been teaching for 34 years, and high school computer science courses for the past 10 years. Art was one of the initial members for the CS For All Initiative founded by the Obama Administration and the National Science Foundation. Recently, Art and his wife Lolo became first time grandparents for their beautiful granddaughter Sofie and love spending time with her!

Minhtuyen Mai manages the Code.org Regional Partnership Program and is a Research-Practice Partnership Designer at CREATE. Minh makes opportunities for teachers and K-12 students to learn computer science. She is also known as “Mighty Minh'' across the country for her awesome skills in bringing people together and networking. In Mighty Minh’s spare time, she loves to play Pokemon and is always training to be the best like no one ever was. 

Gal Mishne is an Assistant Professor at the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute. She develops methods to find hidden structure in large noisy datasets and visualize data so humans can look at it. She loves to paint and draw. http://mishne.ucsd.edu/ 

Saura Naderi ‘07 earned her engineering degree from UC San Diego Jacobs School and leads the outreach efforts for Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute (HDSI). She is currently designing and implementing her 3rd outreach program, Lab 3.0, at HDSI. Lab 1.0 - UCSD The myLab Program and Lab 2.0 - Qualcomm Thinkabit Lab. She is passionate about creating outreach programs for anyone to learn about STEM. She is also known as “robotsaura” because she loves combining art and robotics. 

 Rayan Saab is an Associate Professor in the Mathematics Department and at the Halicioglu Data Science Institute. He works on developing computational methods and theory for solving problems related to collecting, processing, and analyzing data. He came to this work first through an undergrad degree in electrical engineering and finding himself always interested in both making things work and understanding why they do. Find out more about Dr. Saab's research: http://www.math.ucsd.edu/~rsaab/ 

Jingbo Shang is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Engineering Department and at the Halicioglu Data Science Institute. He works on turning unstructured text data into structured knowledge and insights with minimum human effort. As a new hobby developed over the pandemic time, he shares cooking secrets on Youtube. Link to website: https://shangjingbo1226.github.io/ 

Benjamin Smarr is an Assistant Professor in Bioengineering and the Halicioglu Data Science Institute. His research focuses on time series analysis in biological systems, with an emphasis on practical information extraction for translational applications. 

Susan Yonezawa  is the Associate Director at CREATE (Center for Research, Educational Equity, Assessment and Teaching Excellence) and the Principal Investigator on CS LISTEN and multiple educational equity projects in San Diego county. Susan straddles the worlds of policy, practice, and research, working to embed research and design techniques and mindsets into the lived practices and policies of urban public schooling.