For media: CSU experts available to discuss variety of issues surrounding AI

Artificial intelligence is already changing the world, and now the question is: What’s next?

Colorado State University researchers have been studying and utilizing AI long before ChatGPT captured headlines, and can provide insights about everything from the science behind how large language models work to the potential pitfalls of an automated world to how this technology can improve our weather forecasts.

See a list of experts below. To schedule interviews, please contact news@colostate.edu

The science behind AI

Chuck Anderson, professor of computer science

Chuck Anderson builds machine learning algorithms and deep neural networks for reinforcement learning, brain-computer interfaces and high-dimensional data in general. He also runs a consulting company that provides custom AI solutions to important problems related to everything from health to environment to energy. 

Bruce Draper, chair of the Department of Computer Science

Bruce Draper co-founded CSU’s computer vision research group, and focuses on recognizing people, their gestures and their actions, and applying this to complex systems of interacting people and machines. From 2019-2023, he served as a program manager for DARPA in the I20 office, where he directed research on AI and mental health, AI agents with augmented reality, adversarial AI and the geometry of learning.

Nikhil Krishnaswamy, assistant professor of computer science

Krishnaswamy’s expertise encompasses a wide variety of AI-related issues. He studies how humans and computers can communicate more intuitively and naturally using language, gestures and actions.

Hamed Qahri-Saremi, assistant professor of computer information systems 

Hamed Qahri-Saremi’s research focuses on users’ behaviors on digital platforms, including the potential roles of AI on online social platforms and their consequences for user behaviors. He can discuss the personal and social effects of AI, including its potential dark sides, as well as how integrating it into some business practices can actually further trust.

Darrell Whitley, professor of computer science

Darrell Whitley is the director of the AI Program at CSU, which is made up of six faculty and approximately 30 graduate students. Whitley’s research focuses on genetic algorithms, which take complex design and scheduling problems and encode them on what’s known as “artificial DNA” – allowing scientists to use reproduction, mutation and even artificial selection to evolve better solutions to problems. He also studies deep learning ensembles and artificial neural networks. 

AI and academia 

Dan Baker, teaching associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Sam Bechara, associate professor of practice in the Department of Mechanical Engineering

Dan Baker and Sam Bechara are co-coordinators of the Walter Scott Jr. College of Engineer’s Master Teacher Initiative, and hosted a series of lunchtime discussions around the threats and opportunities that ChatGPT presents in the context of a rigorous engineering education.

Joseph Brown, director of the CSU Academic Integrity Program

Joseph Brown directs all of CSU’s efforts toward building a culture of academic integrity on campus. In the AI era, he produces trainings, resources and research to help faculty and students adapt to the AI-infused higher education landscape. One such resource is the “AI & AI” Blog (for “Artificial Intelligence and Academic Integrity”) which features a toolkit of resources from across higher education that he built to provide faculty with information vital to understanding and innovating beyond the challenge of AI in their courses: https://tilt.colostate.edu/ai-and-ai/

Genesea Carter, Department of English

Genesea Carter is the associate director of the CSU Composition Program and has expertise in composition and rhetoric. She can discuss if/when/how to use AI in writing, and the pedagogical implications of students using this technology in their assignments. 

Vauhini Vara, visiting professor in creative writing

Vauhini Vara is a fiction writer and journalist. She has written about artificial intelligence for Wired, Fortune and other publications. Her novel “The Immortal King Rao,” a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, imagines a world in which the government depends on AI for all its decision-making. She’s currently working on a forthcoming essay collection called “Searches” that explores, among other things, the future of language in the age of artificial intelligence. It will include her viral essay “Ghosts‚” which was adapted by This American Life and anthologized in the Best American Essays. The essay, about her sister’s death, was written in collaboration with the AI language model GPT-3. 

Applying AI to world problems

Elizabeth Barnes, professor of atmospheric science

Elizabeth Barnes is a climate scientist who uses machine learning to study global atmospheric dynamics and variability, allowing scientists to make skillful, accurate predictions weeks-to-years in advance. She also co-authored an essay focusing on how to responsibly use AI in science: https://bit.ly/45wYOK4. 

Edwin Chong, professor and head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Edwin Chong’s work involves leveraging artificial intelligence for applications in sectors ranging from robotics to transportation. He has also used machine learning to map out an underwater area using sonar measurements. He has previously been interviewed about AI and education: https://bit.ly/3R37WBJ 

Keith Paustian,  University Distinguished Professor in Soil and Crop Sciences and a senior research scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory

Keith Paustian is CSU’s principal investigator in a $20 million National Science Foundation-funded AI institute focused on climate-smart agriculture and forestry: https://bit.ly/45PdBzv 

Sudeep Pasricha, professor of electrical and computer engineering

Sudeep Pasricha’s research focuses on AI applications for sustainable data center computing, autonomous vehicles, electronic chips, indoor navigation and cyber physical security.

Russ Schumacher, professor of atmospheric science and Colorado state climatologist

Over the past several years, Russ Schumacher has led a team developing a sophisticated machine learning model for advancing skillful prediction of hazardous weather across the continental U.S. First trained on historical records of excessive rainfall, the model is now smart enough to make accurate predictions of events like tornadoes and hail four to eight days in advance – the crucial sweet spot for forecasters to get information out to the public so they can prepare. The model is called CSU-MLP, or Colorado State University – Machine Learning Probabilities.