Fernando Benadon
American University

Fernando Benadon oversees the music theory & composition program in the Department of Performing Arts. His research focuses on rhythm cognition and complexity. Recent professional highlights include a Digital Humanities Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition, a CD release, a fellowship from the Mannes Music & Mind institute, and various premieres, publications, and research presentations.

Michael Fitzgerald
University of District of Columbia

Michael Fitzgerald is a music researcher, author, educator, and librarian/archivist. Jazz scholar and a co-author of the Gigi Gryce biography Rat Race Blues, he has been leading an effort to build an online jazz discography resource for the past several years. Recently he added 50 more leader discographies to his website, including pages for Kenny Dorham, Charles Tolliver, and Hal McKusick: www.jazzdiscography.com/fitzgera/

Carl Kingsford
University of Maryland

Carl Kingsford is an Assistant Professor with teh Department of Computer Science UM Institute for Advanced Computer Studies and Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. Recently, he has received the prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship in the area of evolutionary and computational molecular biology. Carl Kingsford is one of 12 awardees in this area and the only Sloan awardee from the University: www.cbcb.umd.edu/~carlk/

Darya Filippova
University of Maryland

Darya Filippova started her undergraduate career in Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics (CMC) at Lomonosov Moscow State university. She moved to USA with her family during her 3rd year and tranferred to University of Maryland, College Park. As an undergraduate, she majored in Math and Computer Science and received a B.S. in 2007. Darya continued studies in computer science and obtained M.S. in 2009. After a short break, she joined Maryland's PhD program in computer science.Darya is interested in information visualization, algorithms, and computational biology. With her advisor Carl Kingsford, she is looking for ways to improve understanding of data through visualizations .