IAAAI community directory
Building a community of AI interested colleagues
Bringing together colleagues from across the NAU community, to learn, grow, and adapt to the ever-changing Artificial Intelligence landscape. This directory is meant to connect you to the diverse members of our NAU IAAAI community.
IAAAI Membership is open to all faculty and academic professionals across the state. Upon sign up, you will be included in our internal communications and listed below in the directory to foster cross-disciplinary connections.
Members are invited to participate in IAAAI-wide activities and events, signaling a commitment to staying informed and involved as we collectively define best practices and the future of AI at NAU.
Apologies for the limited navigation. Members listed by college/business units in alphabetical order. To search using Control/F or Command/F, please expand all accordions.
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.
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.
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.
Chih-Hsiung Tu, Department of Educational Specialties
- Interested in human-centered AI, AI-supported instructional design, online social presence, social learning analytics, SEL in digital learning, and the evolving relationships among AI, community building, learner interaction, and higher education 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.
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.
Sarah Bolander, Physician Assistant program
- My interests include ethical, human-centered AI integration in health professions education through teaching, scholarship, and faculty development. Interests include AI literacy, assessment design, learner support, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Stephanie Garrison, Physical Therapy program
- I am intrigued in learning new ways to integrate AI into teaching and research. I have taken some conference courses and continuing education for AI learning, but it feels that this field is advancing so quickly that I am needing to keep in touch with new advancements and best practices.
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.
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.
Jason Myrowitz, NAU Yuma
- I use AI in my negotiation and current topics courses to simulate negotiations, evaluate persuasion strategies, compare media framing, and practice creating prompts in line with workplace norms. I also co-created an AI module that teaches new students practical, ethical, and professional AI use.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?