Dr. Evangelia G. Chrysikou is an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department at Drexel University and the Director of the Applied Cognitive and Brain Sciences Program. She holds a Ph.D. in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from Temple University, where she also completed a year-long postdoctoral appointment in cognitive neuropsychology, followed by postdoctoral training at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Chrysikou uses cognitive neuroscience methods, especially functional brain imaging and noninvasive electric brain stimulation, to study cognitive flexibility and creative thinking and problem solving, as well as the implications of such flexibility for theories of creativity, semantic knowledge organization, and cognitive control. Dr. Chrysikou is further exploring the educational applications of this research for the development of higher-order thinking in adults.

John Gero is a Research Professor in Computer Science and Architecture at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and a Research Professor at the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study and at the Department of Computational Social Science, George Mason University. Formerly he was Professor of Design Science and Co-Director of the Key Centre of Design Computing and Cognition, at the University of Sydney. He is the author or editor of 54 books and over 700 papers and book chapters in the fields of design science, design computing, artificial intelligence, computer-aided design, design cognition and design neurocognition. He has been a Visiting Professor of Architecture, Civil Engineering, Cognitive Science, Computer Science, Design and Computation or Mechanical Engineering at MIT, UC-Berkeley, UCLA, Columbia and CMU in the USA, at Strathclyde and Loughborough in the UK, at INSA-Lyon and Provence in France and at EPFL-Lausanne in Switzerland. His former doctoral students are professors in the USA, UK, Australia, Finland, India, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan. Current and recent research funding has been from the NSF (CMMI, CNS, EEC, IIS and SBE Programs), DARPA and NASA. He has been the recipient of many excellence awards including the Harkness Fellowship, two Fulbright Fellowships, two SRC Fellowships and various named chairs. He is on the editorial boards of numerous journals related to design science, computer-aided design, artificial intelligence and knowledge engineering and is the chair of the international conference series Artificial Intelligence in Design, the conference series Design Computing and Cognition and the international conference series Computational and Cognitive Models of Creative Design. Professor Gero is also an international consultant in the fields of design research, design cognition, computer-aided design, artificial intelligence in design and technology policy.

Jonathan Cagan is the George Tallman and Florence Barrett Ladd Professor of Mechanical Engineering at CMU. His career spans collaborative and innovative work in education, research, and industry. At Carnegie Mellon, Cagan co-founded and co-directed the Integrated Innovation Institute Opens in new window and served as associate dean for graduate and faculty affairs and chief academic officer of the College of Engineering. Cagan was recently honored with the Robert A. Doherty Award for Sustained Contributions to Excellence in Education. He is a Fellow in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and was awarded with the ASME Design Theory and Methodology Award. He has authored several books, more than 250 publications, and is an inventor on multiple patents.

Tripp Shealy is an assistant professor in the Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and principal faculty member in the Myers-Lawson School of Construction at Virginia Tech. Previously, Dr. Shealy worked as a consultant for the construction industry reviewing building codes, assisting engineering firms with sustainability assessments, and as a project engineer building water treatment facilities. He received his doctorate from Clemson University. His research focus is on judgment and decision making for sustainable infrastructure. He targets under explored areas by applying concepts from psychology, behavioral economics, and data science to implement cost effective ways to guide stakeholders in the infrastructure development process towards decisions that lead to more sustainable outcomes. His research interest also includes how themes related to sustainability can attract new students to study engineering.

Dr. Yong Zeng is a Professor in the Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering at Concordia University. He is the president of Society for Design and Process Science (SDPS). He was an NSERC Chair in Aerospace Design Engineering program (2015 - 2019). He was the Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in design science (2004 - 2014). He received his Ph.D. from Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Calgary in 2001 and another PhD degree in Computational Mechanics from Dalian University of Technology in 1992. He is an Associate Editor of AI EDAM (Cambridge), Honorary Editor (since 2018) and Editor-in-Chief (2012-2018) of Journal of Integrated Design and Process Science (IOS), and an editorial board member of Computers in Industry as well as Computational Design and Engineering (Elsevier). Zeng’s research aims to understand and improve creative design activities through formal and neuro-cognitive experimental approaches. He has proposed a new domain-independent design methodology called Environment-Based Design (EBD).

Dr. Naama Mayseless obtained her Ph.D. in Neuropsychology from the University of Haifa (Israel) in 2015 for her work on the neural mechanisms of creative thinking, emphasizing evaluation processes and possible interventions aimed at enhancing creativity. She then continued to a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford working with Prof. Allan Reiss investigating social factors that affect creativity. Her current research focuses on two main issues: social effects on creativity expressed in brain synchronization between people leading to innovative ideas, and brain mechanisms of creativity and humor in children. Dr. Mayseless is particularly interested in extending neuroscientific methodologies to include more naturalistic study designs related to team interactions.

Oshin Vartanian received his PhD in experimental psychology from the University of Maine. He is the Co-Editor of Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, and past Editor of Empirical Studies of the Arts. He is the recipient of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Division 10 Daniel E. Berlyne Award in recognition of outstanding research by a junior scholar. His co-edited volumes include “Neuroaesthetics” (Baywood Publishing Company), “Neuroscience of creativity” (The MIT Press), “Neuroscience of decision making” (Psychology Press), and most recently “The Cambridge handbook of the neuroscience of creativity” (Cambridge University Press). His main areas of interest include the cognitive and neural bases of aesthetics and creativity.

Dr. Yoed Kenett is an assistant Professor at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering & Management at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. His research computationally and empirically investigates the complexity of high-level cognition in typical and atypical populations, focusing on creativity, associative thought, knowledge, and memory search. To investigate these issues, he applies computational, behavioral, and neural methods.