HiAI University of Haifa AI Conference
MAY 25-27, 2025
Organizing Committee
Conference Co-Chairs
Prof. Itzik Klein
DSRC Scientific Committee Member
The Hatter Department of Marine Technologies
Head of ANSFL Lab
Itzik Klein received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Aerospace Engineering from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel, in 2004 and 2007, respectively, and a Ph.D. degree in Geo-information Engineering from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, in 2011. He is an Associate Professor, heading the Autonomous Navigation and Sensor Fusion Lab, at the Charney School of Marine Sciences, Hatter Department of Marine Technologies, University of Haifa. He is an IEEE Senior Member and member of the IEEE Journal of Indoor and Seamless Positioning and Navigation (J-ISPIN) Editorial Board. He is currently a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society and part of the leadership team of the Data Science Research Center at the University of Haifa. Prior to joining the University of Haifa, he worked at leading companies in Israel on navigation and sensor fusion topics for more than 15 years. He has a wide range of experience in navigation systems and sensor fusion from both industry and academic perspectives. His research interests lie in the intersection of artificial intelligence with inertial sensing, sensor fusion, and robotics.
Prof. Mor Peleg
DSRC Director
Department of Information Systems
Mor Peleg holds a BSc and MSc degrees in biology and PhD (1999) in Information Systems, from the Technion and postdoctoral studies (2003) at Stanford’s Medical Informatics program. She is Full Professor at the Department of Information Systems, University of Haifa, which she joined in 2003, Head of the University of Haifa’s Data Science Center, and former Chair of the Department of Information Systems and of the BSc in Data Science program. She is the Editor-inChief of the Journal of Biomedical Informatics and is Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics. Prof. Peleg is internationally renowned in the area of clinical decision support, with a focus on using ontologies to integrate patient data with clinical knowledge. She led the large-scale European project MobiGuide, providing sensor-monitoring and evidence-based personalized decision-support to patients any time everywhere. Her current research exploits AI, behavioral theories and evidence-based medicine for a new model of cancer care, provided directly to patients (https://capable-project.eu/). An additional line of research focuses on using LLMs for ontology learning.
Conference Committee
Prof. Anna Brook
Department of Geography and Environmental Studies
Head of Remote Sensing Lab
Anna Brook is an Associate Professor at the School of Environmental Science, heading the Spectroscopy and Remote Sensing Laboratory at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Haifa. Her research is fundamentally multidisciplinary and deals with an understanding of natural processes and human impacts on the biophysical environment. It focuses on research that drives technological, environmental and social change, including advanced technologies in the social aspect of environment management, embracing the complexity of the human-environment relationship, and physical model development for complex and non-trivial real-world problems in the era of climate change. The scientific and more holistic approach involves technological and computational means for analysing the dynamical processes, developing metrics, and examining the weights of policy measures to improve sustainability. Aiming to bridge the gap between machine learning and geoscience for sustainability and environmental management by developing hybrid approaches, coupling physical processes with the versatility of data-driven machine learning to better understand ecosystems, biodiversity, dynamic processes and environmental responses.
Prof. Anna Zamansky
Department of Information Systems
Head of Lab Tech4Animels
Anna Zamansky is an Associate Professor at the Department of Information Systems. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University and was a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Technical University of Vienna prior to establishing her lab, Tech4Animals. The lab develops AI solutions for understanding animal behavior and promoting their welfare, well-being and health and is a pioneer of affective computing for animals, developing AI models for recognizing emotions and pain from facial expressions and body language of various species, including farm, companion and wild animals.
Dr. Dan Rosenbaum
Department of Computer Science
Dan is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Haifa, working on machine learning and computer vision. Before joining the University of Haifa he was a research scientist at DeepMind (2016-2021). He completed his PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2016, advised by Yair Weiss, studying generative models for low-level vision problems.
Prof. Oren Gal
The Hatter Department of Marine Technologies
Head of Swarms & AI Lab
I hold a B.Sc. in Aerospace Engineering, an M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Geo-information Engineering, all from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Currently, I am an Assistant Professor leading the Swarm and AI (SAIL) Lab at the University of Haifa’s Hatter Department of Marine Technologies. Before joining the University, I spent over two decades as the founder and CTO of Autonomy & Data Science R&D in the government sector. In this role, I collaborated with international research partners and led research groups. For the past five years, I have been engaged in joint research on swarms and machine learning algorithms with prestigious institutions like CSAIL & LIDS at MIT and UPenn. My research focuses on harnessing the potential of swarms and artificial intelligence to benefit humanity. Swarms’ adaptability and scalability make them ideal for tasks requiring distributed sensing, acting, and processing. This presents exciting possibilities for tackling complex, large-scale challenges facing our world. From nanorobots for cancer treatment to environmental monitoring and conservation in the ocean, disaster response and recovery, traffic management, and logistics, swarm intelligence offers humanity significant benefits.
Prof. Roi Poranne
Department of Computer Science
Roi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Haifa. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Technion and was a senior researcher at ETH Zurich before joining the University. He leads the xCraft lab for interactive robotics and design. His research revolves around improving human-robot interactions and user design interfaces by learning to personalize. The lab puts a strong emphasis on sensory augmentation, such as virtual reality and haptics, and the development of high performance optimization methods coupled with gamification techniques, to deliver powerful user experiences. Work done in the lab is often highlighted in scientific and design outlets thanks to its visual appeal. In addition, Roi leads the video game design project at the department, and the upcoming video game design track for CS students at the university.
Dr. Rotem Dror
Department of Information Systems
Rotem is an Assistant Professor (Senior Lecturer) at the Department of Information Systems, University of Haifa. She is currently searching for enthusiastic students eager to delve into research in areas such as natural language processing and statistics. She completed her Postdoctoral Research at the Cognitive Computation Group at the Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, Working with Prof. Dan Roth. she completed her Ph.D. in the Natural Language Processing Group, supervised by Prof. Roi Reichart, at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. Her doctoral thesis, titled “Structured Solutions in Natural Language Processing: Algorithms and Statistically Sound Evaluation,” explored innovative approaches to structured prediction algorithms and statistical evaluation of them. Her research involves developing statistically sound methodologies for empirical investigation and evaluation for Data Science with a focus on Natural Language Processing applications.
HiAI University of Haifa AI Conference
MAY 25-27, 2025
Organizing Committee
Conference
Co-Chairs
Prof. Itzik Klein
DSRC Scientific Committee Member
The Hatter Department of Marine Technologies
Head of ANSFL Lab
Itzik Klein received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Aerospace Engineering from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel, in 2004 and 2007, respectively, and a Ph.D. degree in Geo-information Engineering from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, in 2011. He is an Associate Professor, heading the Autonomous Navigation and Sensor Fusion Lab, at the Charney School of Marine Sciences, Hatter Department of Marine Technologies, University of Haifa. He is an IEEE Senior Member and member of the IEEE Journal of Indoor and Seamless Positioning and Navigation (J-ISPIN) Editorial Board. He is currently a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society and part of the leadership team of the Data Science Research Center at the University of Haifa. Prior to joining the University of Haifa, he worked at leading companies in Israel on navigation and sensor fusion topics for more than 15 years. He has a wide range of experience in navigation systems and sensor fusion from both industry and academic perspectives. His research interests lie in the intersection of artificial intelligence with inertial sensing, sensor fusion, and robotics.
Prof. Mor Peleg
DSRC Director
Department of Information Systems
Mor Peleg holds a BSc and MSc degrees in biology and PhD (1999) in Information Systems, from the Technion and postdoctoral studies (2003) at Stanford’s Medical Informatics program. She is Full Professor at the Department of Information Systems, University of Haifa, which she joined in 2003, Head of the University of Haifa’s Data Science Center, and former Chair of the Department of Information Systems and of the BSc in Data Science program. She is the Editor-inChief of the Journal of Biomedical Informatics and is Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics. Prof. Peleg is internationally renowned in the area of clinical decision support, with a focus on using ontologies to integrate patient data with clinical knowledge. She led the large-scale European project MobiGuide, providing sensor-monitoring and evidence-based personalized decision-support to patients any time everywhere. Her current research exploits AI, behavioral theories and evidence-based medicine for a new model of cancer care, provided directly to patients (https://capable-project.eu/). An additional line of research focuses on using LLMs for ontology learning.
Conference Committee
Prof. Anna Brook
Department of Geography and Environmental Studies
Head of Remote Sensing Lab
Anna Brook is an Associate Professor at the School of Environmental Science, heading the Spectroscopy and Remote Sensing Laboratory at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Haifa. Her research is fundamentally multidisciplinary and deals with an understanding of natural processes and human impacts on the biophysical environment. It focuses on research that drives technological, environmental and social change, including advanced technologies in the social aspect of environment management, embracing the complexity of the human-environment relationship, and physical model development for complex and non-trivial real-world problems in the era of climate change. The scientific and more holistic approach involves technological and computational means for analysing the dynamical processes, developing metrics, and examining the weights of policy measures to improve sustainability. Aiming to bridge the gap between machine learning and geoscience for sustainability and environmental management by developing hybrid approaches, coupling physical processes with the versatility of data-driven machine learning to better understand ecosystems, biodiversity, dynamic processes and environmental responses.
Prof. Anna Zamansky
Department of Information Systems
Head of Lab Tech4Animels
Anna Zamansky is an Associate Professor at the Department of Information Systems. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University and was a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Technical University of Vienna prior to establishing her lab, Tech4Animals. The lab develops AI solutions for understanding animal behavior and promoting their welfare, well-being and health and is a pioneer of affective computing for animals, developing AI models for recognizing emotions and pain from facial expressions and body language of various species, including farm, companion and wild animals.
Dr. Dan Rosenbaum
Department of Computer Science
Dan is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Haifa, working on machine learning and computer vision. Before joining the University of Haifa he was a research scientist at DeepMind (2016-2021). He completed his PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2016, advised by Yair Weiss, studying generative models for low-level vision problems.
Prof. Oren Gal
The Hatter Department of Marine Technologies
Head of Swarms & AI Lab
I hold a B.Sc. in Aerospace Engineering, an M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Geo-information Engineering, all from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Currently, I am an Assistant Professor leading the Swarm and AI (SAIL) Lab at the University of Haifa’s Hatter Department of Marine Technologies. Before joining the University, I spent over two decades as the founder and CTO of Autonomy & Data Science R&D in the government sector. In this role, I collaborated with international research partners and led research groups. For the past five years, I have been engaged in joint research on swarms and machine learning algorithms with prestigious institutions like CSAIL & LIDS at MIT and UPenn. My research focuses on harnessing the potential of swarms and artificial intelligence to benefit humanity. Swarms’ adaptability and scalability make them ideal for tasks requiring distributed sensing, acting, and processing. This presents exciting possibilities for tackling complex, large-scale challenges facing our world. From nanorobots for cancer treatment to environmental monitoring and conservation in the ocean, disaster response and recovery, traffic management, and logistics, swarm intelligence offers humanity significant benefits.
Prof. Roi Poranne
Department of Computer Science
Roi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Haifa. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Technion and was a senior researcher at ETH Zurich before joining the University. He leads the xCraft lab for interactive robotics and design. His research revolves around improving human-robot interactions and user design interfaces by learning to personalize. The lab puts a strong emphasis on sensory augmentation, such as virtual reality and haptics, and the development of high performance optimization methods coupled with gamification techniques, to deliver powerful user experiences. Work done in the lab is often highlighted in scientific and design outlets thanks to its visual appeal. In addition, Roi leads the video game design project at the department, and the upcoming video game design track for CS students at the university.
Dr. Rotem Dror
Department of Information Systems
Rotem is an Assistant Professor (Senior Lecturer) at the Department of Information Systems, University of Haifa. She is currently searching for enthusiastic students eager to delve into research in areas such as natural language processing and statistics. She completed her Postdoctoral Research at the Cognitive Computation Group at the Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, Working with Prof. Dan Roth. she completed her Ph.D. in the Natural Language Processing Group, supervised by Prof. Roi Reichart, at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. Her doctoral thesis, titled “Structured Solutions in Natural Language Processing: Algorithms and Statistically Sound Evaluation,” explored innovative approaches to structured prediction algorithms and statistical evaluation of them. Her research involves developing statistically sound methodologies for empirical investigation and evaluation for Data Science with a focus on Natural Language Processing applications.