Naveena Yanamala

Alumna of the 2001 batch, Dr. Naveena Yanamala, PhD, graduated with an MSIT in Bioinformatics from IIIT Hyderabad and obtained her Ph.D in Medicine with focus on Integrated Systems Biology from the University of Pittsburgh in 2009. She is currently an Associate Professor of Medicine, Section Chief of Clinical Research & AI Innovation, Director of AI/ML Research, and Director of the Center for Innovation at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Jersey. In addition, she is a Special Government Employee of the US FDA and an Adjunct Faculty at Carnegie Mellon University in the Software and Societal Systems Department (S3D). She played a pivotal role in stabilizing the ambitious MSIT program at IIIT Hyderabad, which ultimately led to the establishment of the Bioinformatics Research Center, later evolving into the Center for Computational Natural Sciences and Bioinformatics (CCNSB).

Dr. Yanamala held several leadership positions in occupational safety and health research governance, including serving on the steering committee of the Center for Occupational Robotics Research (CORR) within the Division of Safety Research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). With over 15 years of interdisciplinary research experience, Dr. Yanamala has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed articles at the intersection of biology, health, and computation. Her innovative work in risk assessment and stratification using machine learning, especially in cardiovascular disease and environmental exposures, has earned her widespread recognition. She received multiple Alice Hamilton Awards for exceptional contributions to occupational and environmental health, as well as nominations for the Charles C. Shepard Science Award, the CDC's highest recognition for scientific excellence.

Her contributions have also been recognized within the clinical and cardiology community, where her work received multiple recognitions and Best Paper award from the American College of Cardiology. In 2020, her team won the NIH NHLBI Big Data Analysis Challenge, a national award spotlighting innovation in data science and cardiovascular health. Most recently, she was honored with the Dean's Inaugural Faculty Excellence Award in Clinical Research from Rutgers Medical School, underscoring her sustained impact as a leader in clinical research, translational AI, and computational medicine.

Recently, she was featured in the IIITH blog - https://blogs.iiit.ac.in/naveena-yanamala/ Know more about her at- https://www.linkedin.com/in/naveena-yanamala-ms-phd-fase-240a229/

Manish Jain

Alumnus of the batch of 2003, Dr. Manish Jain, PhD graduated with a B.Tech (Hons) in CSE from IIIT Hyderabad and obtained his Ph.D in Computer Science with focus on Artificial Intelligence from the University of Southern California in 2013. Manish currently serves as a Research Engineer in Google DeepMind, which is Google's flagship AI research laboratory. Manish received multiple awards for his path-breaking research in the cutting-edge areas of computer science focused on Applied AI, Machine Learning, Game Theory and Multiagent Systems. These include the Best Dissertation Award in 2013 from the computer science dept. of USC and Winner of the IFAAMAS Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award from AAMAS in 2014, which is a top conference in the area of multiagent systems.

The deployed aspects of his research worked received wide attention resulting in a Commendation certificate from Los Angeles World Airports Police Department along with a Certificate of Appreciation from the Transportation Security Administration for Federal Air Marshals Service (FAMS). In addition, his research paper titled Software Assistants for Randomized Patrol Planning for The LAX Airport Police and The Federal Air Marshals Service was finalist for the EURO Operations Research Conference Excellence in Practice Award EEPA'2010 and received the RIST Prize from Military Operations Research Society. In 2013, Dr. Manish co-founded Avata Intelligence [which got acquired by Procore Technologies eight years later] based on his thesis work and experience, a startup that focused on security systems for defense agencies. Know more about him at - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manish-jain-kj2020/.