Nicholas Giudice, Ph.D.

Dr. Nicholas Giudice is Professor of Spatial Computing in the School of Computing and Information Science at the University of Maine, where he is founder and Chief Research Scientist of the VEMI Lab. He is also co-founder and Chief Research Officer of Unar Labs, a Maine-based start-up company developing bio-inspired multisensory technologies supporting inclusive information access. His research deals with spatial cognition and information access for blind and visually impaired (BVI) people, older adults, and sighted individuals in eyes-free situations. He focuses on the design and evaluation of accessible multimodal technology supporting graphical access, mapping, and navigation. He has published over 150 scientific papers in these areas, is on the editorial board of two accessibility journals, the board of directors of two blindness-related organizations, and the scientific advisory board of two information-access companies. He lives with his guide dog in Portland and Bangor Maine.

Joyeeta Mitra Mukherjee

I am a technology professional with 15+ years of work experience spanning academia, start-ups, and large matrix organizations. Led and contributed to artificial intelligence applications for machine vision in diverse sectors such as medical imaging, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, autonomous systems, and healthcare. 8 years of hands-on technical consulting experience, with exposure to cross-functional teams worldwide both remote as well as in-person setting. Built AI systems from the ground up, using innovative strategies for data-generation and semi-automatic labeling.

I hold a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Houston. My journey in machine learning began with my PhD and since then I have worked with different kinds of biomedical signals and images as a research scientist and an algorithm developer with over 30 publications. Since 2016, I have expanded my work to other domains using computer vision & image processing, and assumed more of a technical leadership role collaborating with research and technical groups in organizations of all scales to ideate, advise, prototype, and deploy AI workflows.

Owen Thompson

Owen is a Motion Picture / Imaging Specialized AI Engineer. He is an autodidact knowledgeable in video and image data processing, imaging centered ML, and shader programming. He also has experience building minimal backed infrastructure on Debian Linux. He also boulders at a V5/V6 and listens to Industrial and Metal music prolifically. Website/Portfolio: https://owdt-magic.org