The Organizing Committee

Marcus M. Noack, Chair

Research Scientist, Applied Math and Comp. Research Division, LBNL, USA

Marcus Noack got his master's degree in geophysics from Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena, Germany. Working as a Ph.D. candidate at Simula Research Laboratory in  Oslo, 

he was able to pursue his interests in the theory of wave propagation and mathematical function optimization. There, Marcus leveraged his knowledge of theoretical and numerical physics and applied mathematics and connected it with high-performance computing to create efficient methods to model wave propagation and solve non-linear inverse problems. He graduated with a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Oslo. Starting at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a Post Doc, Marcus worked on uncertainty quantification, stochastic function approximation, and autonomous experimentations. 

Now, as a Research Scientist, Marcus is continuing this line of work with a focus on stochastic processes for function approximation and dimensionality reduction, function optimization, and high-performance computing while serving the autonomous-experimentation community by providing support and practical software. This work has earned him several awards, most notably the 2022 Director’s Award for Exceptional Early-Carreer Achievements. He is the original founder of CASE and can be reached by email at MarcusNoack@lbl.gov


Aldair E. Gongora

Staff Scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA

Aldair Gongora is a Staff Scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Materials Engineering Division. His research work is at the confluence of machine learning, robotics and automation, and advanced manufacturing. He is interested and focused on accelerating scientific discovery by designing, building, and deploying the next generation of research laboratories that leverage modern tools and capabilities to address critical challenges in materials science, climate and energy sciences, life sciences, and sustainable manufacturing. Aldair holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Rockhurst University and a Master’s and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Boston University, where he conducted research on autonomous experimentation for mechanical design.



Bappaditya Dey

Senior R&D Engineer, imec, Belgium

Bappaditya Dey is a Senior R&D Engineer, Advanced Patterning at imec, Belgium. He is also responsible for developing and optimizing deep learning algorithms and architectures for solving challenging industrial problems in EUV/EBEAM Lithography and SEM Metrology as well as interdisciplinary research collaboration with multiple universities and research teams (across the globe) and mentoring students for their research thesis (MS/PhD) in this domain.

He joined imec in 2018 and worked in various roles since then. He received his PhD degree, majoring in Computer Engineering, from the Center for Advanced Computer Studies (CACS), University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA, in 2022. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Physics (Hons.) and Electronic Science from University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India, in 2006 and 2008, respectively, and the second M. Tech degree in Computer Sc. and Engg. from MAKAUT (formerly known as WBUT), Kolkata, India in 2010. He also received his third M.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering from the Center for Advanced Computer Studies (CACS), University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA in 2017. He is a member of IEEE and SPIE. His research interests include VLSI, microelectronics, reconfigurable hardware, machine learning, computer vision, artificial intelligence, and semiconductor process optimization. Till now, he has authored/co-authored 40 publications and has presented at several international conferences.




Jose Lugo-Martinez

Assistant Professor, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), USA

Jose Lugo-Martinez is an Assistant Professor in the Computational Biology Department at the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He also serves as co-Director of the M.S. in Automated Science at CMU. Prior to that, he was a Lane Fellow at CMU, co-hosted by Professors Ziv Bar-Joseph and Robert F. Murphy. Dr. Lugo-Martinez received a PhD degree in computer science with a minor in bioinformatics from Indiana University (IU) under the supervision of Professor Predrag Radivojac. His research aims at the development of computational approaches to accelerate biomedical knowledge discovery through automated and autonomous science.






Our Past Organizing Committee Members: