AI Innovations and Impact at UC Santa Barbara

The AI Community of Practice’s (AI CoP) five-day symposium explores the innovation and real-world impact of artificial intelligence across teaching, research, and campus operations at UC Santa Barbara. Connect with campus AI scholars and practitioners, engage in meaningful discussions, and discover the latest research and innovations shaping our institution. The program features daily keynotes, panel discussions, tech demos, workshops, and spotlight sessions from diverse members of the UCSB community.

Hosted by the UCSB AI Community of Practice, the Office of Teaching and Learning, the Office of the CIO — with support from the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, the Division of Student Affairs, and the Library.

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Explore the full AI CoP Spring Symposium program here.

Time (PT) Session Type Presentations (on Zoom)
    Monday, April 27
9:00-10:00 am Keynote: AI & Sustainability How sustainable is AI? Making sense of the estimates. [Eric Masanet]
10:30-11:30 am Spotlight Talks: AI for Teaching & Learning Faculty Sensemaking in the Age of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education [Busso]; When an AI Judges Your Work: The Hidden Costs of Algorithmic Assessment [Martin]
12:00-1:00 pm Demonstrations: AI Coding and Website Management Platforms AI-Assisted Coding in the Library’s DREAM Lab [Erickson]; STARBASE - Site Tracking and Risk Baseline Assessment & Security Engine [Sokolov & Katula]
1:30-2:30 pm Spotlight Talks: AI for Research BisQue: Bridging Domain Sciences and Artificial Intelligence [Levenson]; Harnessing ML and AI for understanding and managing human activity in the oceans [McDonald]
3:00-4:00 pm Spotlight Talks: AI for Research Measuring Reasoning in Dialogue at Scale: A Human-in-the-Loop AI Approach [Skinner]; Beyond “Dirty OCR”: How VLMs can help to improve the OCR from legacy digitized collections [Melo-Florez]
    Tuesday, April 28
9:00-10:00 am Keynote: AI & Authorship What is an author in the age of GenAI? [Sowon Park]
10:30-11:30 am Spotlight Talks: AI for Teaching & Learning Can an AI Chatbot Help Students Navigate Course Logistics? A Case Study From a Large Biology Course [Nguyen, Safronova, Maheras, Even]; Gen Z and Using AI in the Classroom [Henderson]
12:00-1:00 pm Panel Discussion: AI Policy in Teaching & Learning Guiding Responsible AI Use in an Environmental Data Science Program [Shanny-Csik, Galaz García & Czapanskiy]
1:30-2:30 pm Spotlight Talks: AI for the Environment & Society Dynamical Tests of a Deep-Learning Weather Prediction Model [Masanam]; Reading Regulation: Remote Industrial Auditing through Natural Language Progressing of EPA Air Permits [O’Neil]
3:00-4:00 pm Spotlight Talks: AI for Teaching & Learning AI and the Representation of Minorities in Engineering [Wong]; Conc3ept: Cognitive Course Content Mapping [Lee]; Quantifying Questions for Efficiency and Equitability [Chavez]
    Wednesday, April 29
9:00-10:00 am Discussion: Undergraduate Student Perspectives on AI in CS Students’ Perspectives on AI Use in Lower-Division CS Courses [Ladha, Chavez, Lee, Lesner, Zhao, He & Majedi]
10:30-11:30 am Spotlight Talks: AI for Teaching, Learning & Workplace Productivity Language Learning in the age of AI and Post-colonial Thought [Kremliovsky]; English Learning in the Age of AI: Access, Ethics, and Educational Change [Faccani]; AI in the Real World: Lessons from Administrative Practice at UCSB [Hartounian]
12:00-1:00 pm Workshop: AI Gems & Workflows for Admins Designing for Connection: Using Custom AI Tools to Amplify Authentic Voices in HFA & MLPS [Snow]
1:30-2:30 pm Spotlight Talks: AI for Teaching & Learning Ask, Edit, Roleplay: Designing AI Into the Statistics Curriculum [Ravat]; Reflecting on the use of GenAI to teach the distinct aspects of human cognition and creativity [Dean]; AI Literacy: Applications for Higher Education [Phan]
3:00-4:00 pm Spotlight Talks: AI for Applications Development Building a Secure AI Knowledge Assistant with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) [Engeln Lambinet-Lascon, Chuang & Llovido]; AI-Plant Symbiosis: Bio-Powered Autonomous Intelligence [Blakemore]
    Thursday, April 30
9:00-10:00 am Panel Discussion Campus AI Leaders Panel [CIO Josh Bright, AVC Linda Adler-Kassner, AVC Kelly Caylor & Dr. Tim Sherwood]
10:30-11:30 am Spotlight Talks: AI for Research Beyond the Polygraph: AI Approaches to Detecting Deception [Dunbar]; Digital Delusions: Investigating the Cycle of Human-Chatbot Interaction [Swan]; Human-AI Organizing (HAO), a framework [Randazzo]
12:00-1:00 pm Demonstrations: Custom UCSB AI Tools A Compliant Canvas: Building UCSB’s Generative AI Sandbox [Quazi]; Building a Data Democratization Tool: LLM-Powered Conversational Analytics [Smith]
1:30-2:30 pm Spotlight Talks: AI for the Environment & Society Is this Really Worth It? (recording not available) [Sarup]; Predicting Surface Winds During Santa Ana and Sundowner Winds Using Extreme Gradient Boosting [Thompson & Jones]; Predicting Natural Gas Consumption Across Los Angeles County Zip Codes Using Machine Learning [Strempfer & Pizano]
3:00-4:00 pm Spotlight Talks: AI for Applications Development AI Continuity Hygiene (Corwin)
Git-Native Autonomous Agents [Blakemore]
    Friday, May 1
10:30-11:30 am Spotlight Talks: AI for Workplace Productivity From Draft to Send: Building an AI-Assisted Newsletter Pipeline for Institutional Communications [Engeln Lambinet-Lacson]; From Prompt to Process: How AI-Assisted Workflow Design is Transforming Continuous Improvement [Mankins]
12:00-12:30 pm Demonstration: AI & Human Innovation The Human Advantage: Why the Best AI Builders Won’t Be Engineers [Gabbay]
2:00-4:00 pm Closing Reception All Welcome! Loma Pelona Conference Center 1108