IAAAI community directory

Ben Alexander, Department of Theatre

• AI Integrated workflows for Stage Managers. AI Creative Content development for Theatre Design.

Karen Bromsoe, Department of Global Languages

• I’m currently in the process of researching for my capstone about AI use in education. I want to create a program to train educators and collect data about its effectiveness. It will be open to educators from the entirety of Arizona state.

Evan Donahue, Comparative Cultural Studies/Computer Science

• I am interested in all things AI, especially anything associated with language and large language models.

Erika Konrad, Department of English

• I teach a class: “AI for Workplace Writers” ENG 599/399. Writing and AI, Workplace uses of AI especially for writing and editing.

Sebastian Leal-Arenas, Department of Global Languages

• Apart from preparing myself and my students to use AI responsibly, I am interested in two main areas: one is AI detection, not for the sake of detection or to ‘catch’ people using AI, rather on the linguistic phenomena that distinguish human from AI language. Second area is perceptions on AI use.

Kent Linthicum, Comparative Cultural Studies

• As an energy studies scholar, I am interested in the relationship between artificial intelligence, energy, infrastructure, and the environment. The growth of A.I. depends on physical infrastructure, but the development and construction of that infrastructure will only happen with public license.

Becky Pratt-Sturges, Comparative Cultural Studies

• I am interested in how emerging technologies such as AI shape storytelling, cultural knowledge, and public engagement while emphasizing ethics, authorship, accessibility, and representation in the field of Museum Studies.

David Van Ness, School of Art + Design

• AI is a tool, particularly in the Arts. Most of my students hate it due to AI Slop dominating media and the discussion around it. While I do use it, I will push back against the prompt artist. I do find it useful to make connections, research, clean my writing, and coding due to my own dyslexia.

Ying Zhang, Department of English

• My AI areas of interest include: (1) Teaching: using GenAI for lesson planning and designing class activities, the role of assessment in the age of AI (2) Research: the potential effectiveness of GenAI in second language learning and teaching, the importance of AI literacy in higher education.

Blue Brazelton, Educational Leadership/CCHE

• Institutional AI governance and policy diffusion; AI-assisted research methodology, including LLM coder reliability across model versions; faculty and student emotional dynamics of AI adoption; equitable AI governance design; AI as productivity infrastructure for academic work.

Marie-Christine Goodworth, First Year Seminar

• I need to share with our program and make sure our students are equipped.

Jacob Lesandri, First Year Seminar

• I “wish to engage with a broad community of colleagues navigating the integration of AI into teaching, scholarship, and research.” I consider myself a strong advocate for students and also a cognitive protectionist. The absence of critical voices on the IAAAI does not serve students or NAU.

Gretchen McAllister, Department of Teaching and Learning

• I direct our doctoral program and am highly interested in the use of AI in the publishing and academic writing context. I also am looking and using it to find ways to effectively support future teachers.

Catharyn Shelton, Educational Specialties

• AI in teaching and learning; Critical approaches to AI.

Chih-Hsiung Tu, Department of Educational Specialties

• My research examines social presence and human connection in AI-mediated learning, including relational and affective dimensions of human-AI interaction, trust, and the development of the SP-AI instrument. I also explore human-centered integration of AI in teaching and learning.

Paul Dijkstra, Department of Biological Sciences, Center for Ecosystem Science and Society

• Working on AI involvement in analyzing metatranscriptome datasets.

Dana Ernst, Department of Mathematics and Statistics

• General productivity; AI-assisted grading; General research assistant; Tool to assist in translating technical mathematics into Lean ( open-source programming language and proof assistant that enables correct, maintainable, and formally verified code.

Angie Hodge-Zickerman, Department of Mathematics & Statistics; Educational Specialties

• My research examines AI in STEMathematics teaching and learning. I work with faculty to meaningfully integrate AI into instruction and assessment. I emphasize reasoning, problem solving, and critique of AI-generated work in mathematics-intensive fields.

Jeff Hovermill, Department of Mathematics and Statistics

• Teaching – how to communicate AI expectations with students and support them in leveraging AI in support of learning.  Research and scholarship – AI in support of teacher planning and AI is support of data science practice.  Synergy between both areas since I’m involved in teacher education.

Deborah Huntzinger, School of Earth and Sustainability; Center for STEM Teaching and Learning

• Data processing, coding, improvements and efficiency in workflow. How to integrate AI literacy into courses in hands on way.

Darrell Kaufman, School of Earth and Sustainability

• I use AI to accelerate data analysis in my research and to boost student engagement in my undergraduate and graduate teaching. I’m concerned about the impact of AI on student learning and I’m fascinated with how rapidly this technology is reshaping education, research, and the world at large.

Monika Keindl, Department of Mathematics and Statistics

• My AI interest focuses on automating administrative tasks such as attendance and grade tracking, streamlining grading, and assisting with mathematical and statistical coding. Delegating these duties to AI reclaims vital time to increase classroom engagement and student-teacher interaction.

Jaechoul Lee, Department of Mathematics and Statistics

• My interests focus on integrating AI/ML with statistical science, including hybrid statistical-deep learning methods, explainable and trustworthy AI/ML, causal machine learning, AI/ML for climate, environmental, and health applications, and Arizona data science education and curriculum innovation.

Nandor Sieben, Department of Mathematics and Statistics

• Data processing, coding, improvements and efficiency in workflow. How to integrate AI literacy into courses in hands on way.

Bonnie Sumner, Biological Sciences

• I would like to learn tips to speed up my internship administration work. Also would like to be able to prevent students cheating with AI. And potentially would be open to using it as a learning tool as long as it doesn’t replace actual hands on learning that most students need to learn anatomy

Derek Uhey, School of Forestry

• I am interested in using AI in both the classroom and conservation. I won a TRAIL award to build AI content into my environmental conservation course where we explored using AI to simulate dialogs with famous conservationists and also explored the ethical considerations of using AI in conservation.

Andrea Kemp, Nursing

• AI in psychiatric nurse practitioner education: curriculum and course design, simulation-based clinical learning, psychopharmacology teaching resources, and responsible AI use in clinical reasoning and documentation for graduate nursing students.

Anthony Dallesandro, Pima Community College- Communication and Writing

• I am interested in the intersection of communication, media studies, rhetoric, and writing, and I am increasingly interested in how AI will affect student learning and faculty instruction in these areas. I teach and oversee CMN 209, Introduction to Communication and Technology.

Stephanie Del Giorgio, Office of the Provost; Office of Graduate and Professional Studies

• My primary interest in advancing AI at NAU is to improve financial oversight and budget management, increasing efficiency and effectiveness. I’m also interested in how AI can elevate NAU’s position in higher education, driving innovation, growth, and broader institutional impact.

Jordan Garcia, Teaching & Learning Center- Instructional Designer

• I am extremely interested in the intersection between AI and education. I am a daily user of LLMs including ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. I love hearing about the unique ways that faculty are incorporating AI into their courses so that I can share some of their ideas with other faculty.

Jerry Gile, Teaching & Learning Center- Instructional Design and Support

• I am interested in helping faculty support students’ learning, engagement and appropriate usage of AI for their coursework and also to prepare for their future careers and employment.

Wally Nolan, Teaching & Learning Center- Instructional Designer

• Student learning Instruction creation, Student success tracking, learning pathway creation.

Ashish Amresh, School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems

• I am working on building AI agents that help students improve their CS skills across the CS curriculum and am interested in exploring tools and other models that the community is building to help students with their course materials.

Mayank Bakshi, School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems

• Research: Trustworthy federated and decentralized learning – Robust fine-tuning of foundation models – Adversary detection and model validation – AI for network operations – Foundations of distributed and high-dimensional learning Teaching: – Foundations of Intelligent Systems (EE 443).

Jarrett Jay Barber, School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems

• As a Statistician whose theory and methods underpin AI, I bring a principled perspective lost in the democratization of AI. I teach graduate predictive ML, linking regression to RF, boosting, and neural networks, and I have explored generative AI to enhance student learning and job readiness.

Jared Duval, School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems

• I design AI-powered health games and telehealth tools that center under-served communities. My work blends HCI, social computing, and play to make AI feel human—improving outcomes while keeping people, not algorithms, at the heart of care.

Veera Surya Bhaskar Gali,  School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems

• I am interested in experimenting with different AI tools to assess the feasibility of developing controlled AI-powered lab environments for undergraduate students.

Marco Gerosa, School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems

• Human-centered AI for software engineering, open source, and computing education, including GenAI for developer support, AI-assisted learning, conversational agents, and empirical studies of collaboration in AI-enabled software work.

Volodymyr Saruta, School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems

• AI readiness and responsible adoption; LLM-integrated teaching and curriculum design; AI-supported learning tools; evaluation of AI use in education; and applied AI for large-scale data, software workflows, and environmental/scientific modeling.

Mariya Vizireanu, School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems

• I’m an industry mixed-method researcher (in tech & entertainment) & NAU games research instructor. At this point, AI use is a “must”/competitive advantage in my field, not an option. I want to understand/contribute to how NAU navigates its responsible integration in academic research.

Lan Zhang, School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems

• AI Security, Adversarial Machine Learning, Robust AI, AI for Cybersecurity, and AI in Education, with a focus on malware detection, adversarial evasion, concept drift, and trustworthy AI.

Samantha Clifford, Anthropology

• My background as an instructional designer and educator has made me interested in examining equity in AI policies, use and access. I have been involved in groups to navigate appropriate AI use, strengthening learning integrity and Integrating UDL and AI to enhance Inclusive Teaching and Learning.

Amy Dryden, School of Communication-Strategic Communication

• Productivity/Overwork when implementing AI. Using AI to streamline workflows to mirror what is being done in the professional advertising community. Helping students understand and learn the difference between generative and agentic AI tools and recognize when/if to use either one.

Steven Gehrke, Geography, Planning, and Recreation

• Application of AI/ML techniques to improve transportation data, travel and activity behavior modeling, spatial analytics, and decision-support tools that advance sustainable mobility options and resilient multimodal transportation systems.

Ronda Jenson, Institute for Human Development

• I am interested in expanding my knowledge of the capacity of AI to advance research and instruction, ethical considerations for use of AI, and the development of AI policy to protect integrity and confidentiality and to uphold trust in community partnerships.

Chris S. Johnson, School of Communication, Visual Communication

• AI as a creative partner in animation and visual storytelling; exploring authorship, iteration, and new forms of cultural production. Interested in how AI reshapes process, perception, and public engagement with media.

Sara Kien, Department of Psychological Sciences

• AI integration in teaching and research, including a TRAIL-funded Socratic chatbot for critical thinking about research methods. Graduate degree in AI/deep learning (UC Berkeley). Creator of “Data Science and AI in Psychology” course as well as a “Data Science and AI in Psychology” OER textbook.

Kurt Lancaster, School of Communication, Creative Media and Film

• Using AI as a research assistant, shaping perspective for creative projects and research projects. I use AI in class lessons, reading and in-class worksheets development for students, using Musey 4.0 for the Science of Storytelling for students to help gain perspective on their work as a comparison.

Jermaine Martinez, School of Communication

• The perils and benefits of AI and AI generated content/infrastructure as an environment. Pedagogy and AI innovations for cultivating meaningful learning. LLMs and semiotics. Trade-offs between the use of AI and the offloading of human cognitive processing.

Janice Sweeter, School of Communication- Strategic Communication

• Help students navigate AI in the classroom and strategic communication workplace. Presented research collaboration at 2025 AEJMC conference.

Viktoria Tidikis, Department of Psychological Sciences

• My interests include AI ethics and responsible use; effective ways to educate students about AI literacy, verification, transparency, and critical evaluation; and AI’s effects on the mind, including cognitive functioning, learning, creativity, decision-making, well-being, and mental health.

Carla Wilson, Women’s and Gender Studies

• I study the ethical use of AI in feminist/queer humanities, applying AI-assisted analysis to the Women’s Studies Radical Sketchbook Project archive, and extending that work (via a TRAIL-funded seminar) into a CURE-grant redesign of WGS 191 for broader undergraduate research training.

C. Chad Woodruff, Department of Psychological Sciences

• I use AI on a daily basis, mostly for the purpose of learning in minutes what might take me many hours of reading. This informs my teaching and has supercharged my research. I recently had Claude write a results section for me. It was wonderful to relieve myself of that tedium.

Kristin Greenwalt, Department of Management, Marketing, and Information Systems Management

• In partnership with RQlab, I have been implementing a customized AI agent into the graduate business analytics capstone. We have been validating and deploying a governed, transcript-driven AI–human learning system designed to improve decision-making, communication, and career readiness.

Darwin Mann, School of Hotel and Restaurant Management

• Innovative tech in hospitality ed means more than new tools — it builds critical thinkers. From AI drafting to live dashboards and VR site tours, technology becomes the vehicle for developing sharper, more adaptive hospitality professionals.

Linda Miller, Management

• My AI experience and interests bridge academia and industry through generative AI, AI-enabled learning, workforce development, business communication, responsible AI governance, and enterprise transformation. I leverage AI to enhance student success, innovation, decision-making, and outcomes.

Landi Morris, Accounting, Economics, and Finance

• I am interested in leveraging AI to create meaningful, real-world learning experiences for accounting students that would otherwise be difficult to replicate in the classroom, while ensuring they develop the skills and judgment needed to thrive in the evolving profession.

Susan K. Williams, Department of Management, Marketing, and Information Systems Management

• My primary interest is helping to prepare our students for their careers with AI. What skills do they need? What jobs will be available to them? Secondly, I’m interested in incorporating AI into my own workflows. Third, as an associate editor, how is AI affecting the review process?