AI Brown Bag Lunch Series

The third meeting of the AI Brown Bag Series will include a short research presentation by Dr. Dan Lannin, Associate Professor of Psychology with a focus on mental health and well-being, titled “Mental Health Meets Machine Learning: Students and AI Therapy Chatbots”. This presentation will be followed by discussion on AI in research and teaching. The event will take place Friday, March 7, 1-2 p.m. in Williams Hall Room 307.

 The fourth meeting of the AI Brown Bag Series will include a panel discussion between Milner librarians: Grace Allbaugh, Maria Tudela, and Associate Director for Academic Enhancement Keenan Wimbley, titled “Empowering our Students in the Age of AI: Centering their Voices & Honoring their Experiences”. This presentation will be followed by discussion on AI in research and teaching. The event will take place Friday, April 18, 1-2 p.m in Williams Hall Room 307.

Previous presenters include Dr. Nathan Kapoor,  Dr. Nariman Ammar, and Dr. Mikyung Shin.

AI and the Humanities: An Interdisciplinary Symposium

The Illinois State University AI and the Humanities Symposium is a unique opportunity to foster discussion among scholars, teachers, and students from around the world and across disciplines of the humanities, arts, and connected social sciences. This event will take place April 16 and 17, 2025 and features speakers Andrea L. Guzman, Emily M. Bender, Lydia Wilkes, Matthew Salzano, Javier Muñoz-Basols, and Lillian-Yvonne Bertram. You can view the program on the website and here:

Minds and Machines: The Synergy of AI and Student’s Success

Milner Library and the Julia N. Visor Center are partnering to develop and facilitate a series of workshops to provide a third space outside the classroom for student to explore and examine AI applications for personal, educational, and professional growth and knowledge acquisition. Workshops will be designed to address inequities in AI technology and unpack critical perspectives on the use and application of these technologies.

Dr. Alex Hanna will be presenting, “The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want,” in anticipation of her upcoming book. She is the Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). This will be a virtual event on Tuesday, March 18 at 6:00 PM on Zoom (registration link).

Dr. Kahyun Choi who will give a talk on, “Responsible AI for Poetry Analysis: Toward Equitable and Diverse Digital Libraries.” Dr. Choi is an Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. This is an in-person event, held in the Southwest Corner of Milner’s 6th floor, at 2:00 PM on Thursday, March 27.

Love is in the (AI)R

As Valentine’s Day approaches, cybercriminals are taking advantage of the holiday to launch romance scams alongside traditional phishing attacks. Universities are prime targets, with scammers focusing on students, faculty, and staff. These scams can now use artificial intelligence (AI) to produce profiles, deepfake images, and voice cloning to build trust and manipulate victims.

I spoke with Illinois State University’s Deputy Chief Information Security Officer Joey Brown to ask some questions about the rise and potential dangers of AI in phishing scams. Here’s what he had to say about staying informed and protecting yourself from these evolving threats.

Illinois State launches Redbird AI-AIDE to empower faculty and staff with AI tools

A significant new effort in this direction is the launch of Redbird AI-AIDE (Artificial Intelligence Advancing Innovation and Discovery in Education), a program designed to help faculty and staff explore the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in their professional roles. Beginning in mid-February 2025, the program will provide participants with access to cutting-edge AI tools, creating opportunities to enhance teaching, research, service, and administrative functions across campus.

IT professor to use satellite technology to track neighborhood inequality

There are some things you don’t forget. As a child, growing up in a predominantly Black, low-income neighborhood of Hammond, Louisiana, Dr. Will Lewis has a vivid memory related to, of all things, infrastructure. 

“There was a streetlight across the street from us that was out for long stretches of time,” said Lewis, an assistant professor of information systems in the School of Information Technology. “I often wondered to myself at dusk if that streetlight would be better attended to if we lived on a different street.” 

Lewis and his research team plan to develop a prototype system that will combine artificial intelligence (AI) and satellite imagery to take snapshot images of neighborhoods and track inequalities in infrastructure maintenance. 

Newly created IT sequence benefits from a Parisian connection

If you were designing a new sequence related to artificial intelligence (AI) to have ready in time for the fall semester and your boss suggested that attending summer school in Paris might be helpful to that effort, that would be a good thing, right? That’s how it happened that Drs. Will Lewis and James Wolf, both faculty members in the School of Information Technology (IT), found themselves in France at “HI! PARIS,” hosted by The Institut Polytechnique de Paris in late July, just ahead of the Olympics.

Inspector Trail: Math student creates AI-powered program for U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center

In Inspector Trail, Wittrock ’24 is training an artificial intelligence (AI) agent—the game’s “player”—to make data-informed maintenance recommendations for more than 200,000 U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) buildings across the globe.

Reimagining Learning: Navigating Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education

Dr. Magnuson will present a discussion of the current generative AI technologies, how we got to where we are, where we are (possibly) going, and how we can prepare ourselves as teachers, researchers, and creative scholars.

Thriving with Artificial Intelligence series

Thriving with Artificial Intelligence series begins Jan. 26. Explore the impact of AI on teaching and scholarship this spring.

Revamp Your Course Materials in the Age of AI​​

Join us for an immersive two-part workshop designed to empower faculty members with the knowledge and skills needed to navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of generative AI in higher education.​

Reimagining Teaching: Navigating Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Join us for an immersive two-part workshop designed to empower faculty members with the knowledge and skills needed to navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of generative AI in higher education.​