Prof Vakhtang Putkaradze received his PhD from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and held faculty positions in New Mexico, Colorado State University, and, most recently, at the University of Alberta, where he was a Centennial Professor between 2012-2019. From 2019 to 2022, he led the science and tech part of the Transformation Team at ATCO Ltd, first as a Senior Director and then Vice-President. After returning back to the University of Alberta, he is studying applications of geometric mechanics to neural networks, in particular, efficient computations of Hamiltonian systems using data-based techniques. His overall main topic of interest is using geometric methods in mechanics and various applications. He has received numerous prizes and awards for research and teaching, including Humboldt Fellowship, Senior JSPS fellowship, CAIMS-Fields industrial math prize and G. I. Zaslavsky prize.