2024 artificial intelligence faculty experts list

The University of South Carolina is harnessing the power and rapid changes of artificial intelligence to advance state-of-the-art applications in machine learning. 

Researchers across campus explore how AI can be used for advancements in health care, education, manufacturing, energy, disaster management and transportation. They are also helping shape and inform the ethics and policies surrounding these emergent solutions. 

The university has compiled a list of faculty experts to help reporters develop stories about artificial intelligence and machine learning. To interview a faculty member, contact the staff member listed with each expert.

Health

Pooyan Jamshidi is an assistant professor of computer science and engineering, and his research interests span the areas of software, systems, AI/machine learning and robotics. He is particularly interested in developing algorithms and tools that enable building resilient systems that can automatically handle goal tradeoffs, incorporate user preferences and constraints, identify causes of failures and self-adapt to operate in dynamic environments. The work integrates areas such as distributed systems, control theory, statistical learning and optimization, causal inference, representation learning and transfer learning, focusing on applications in autonomous systems, AI accelerators and software/hardware co-design.
News contact: Chris Woodley, cwoodley@mailbox.sc.edu, 803-576-7745

Nicholas Boltin is a biomedical engineering instructor who is collaborating with Prisma Health on monitoring brainwave activity of emergency department clinicians during their shifts. The objective is to identify the most traumatic events for each clinician and use that data to prevent burnout and reduce the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder through their careers. He combines AI, machine learning, data mining and predictive analytics to enhance patient care and elevate medical outcomes.
News contact: Chris Woodley, cwoodley@mailbox.sc.edu, 803-576-7745

Psychology professor Chris Rorden and public health professor Roger Newman-Norlund have used artificial intelligence to uncover new insights about brain health. Their machine-learning platform can estimate brain age and health by studying a brain scan image, and it is helping them identify what therapies would best serve stroke patients based on how the brain was damaged. There have been surprises, such as AI's ability to diagnose COVID from a brain image, which may offer clues about the brain's long-term impact from the virus. They are teaching a Spring 2024 undergraduate course where students are using AI and brain image data to conduct experiments.
News contact: Bryan Gentry, brgentry@sc.edu, 434-333-0057

Neuroscience

Christian O’Reilly, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, specializes in how different areas of the brain communicate. His research in computational neuroscience, biosignal processing and neuroimaging aims to identify the organizing principles of the brain, notably for the development of biomarkers for the early diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. He also researches novel ways to study autism and the brain through modeling and artificial intelligence. He is a member of the Artificial Intelligence Institute, the Institute for Mind and Brain and the Carolina Autism and Neurodevelopment Research Center.
News contact: Chris Woodley, cwoodley@mailbox.sc.edu, 803-576-7745

Technology

Forest Agostinelli of USC’s College of Engineering and Computing researches the use of explainable AI to discover new knowledge. Agostinelli’s research attempts to build a positive feedback loop where humans and AI can learn from each other. While many algorithms can perform tasks such as medical image analysis, game playing and protein folding, the AI “thought process” of these methods can be unintelligible to humans and create a lack of trust between humans and AI. He looks to apply explainable artificial intelligence algorithms to problems such as the Rubik’s cube, chemical synthesis, quantum computing and robotics.
News contact: Chris Woodley, cwoodley@mailbox.sc.edu, 803-576-7745

Biplav Srivastava is a computer science professor interested in augmenting people’s cognitive limitations via technology. This enables humans to make rational decisions despite real world complexities of poor data, changing goals and limited resources. He is working on creating trusted AI systems combining neuro-symbolic methods that address issues such as increasing productivity, handling ethical issues, data management and privacy, fostering human-AI interaction and workforce impact. With over two decades of AI research experience, Biplav is a Distinguished Scientist of the Association for Computing Machinery, as well as the USC contact for its participation in the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute.
News contact: Gregory Hardy, ghardy@sc.edu, 352-362-7052

Energy

Jochen Lauterbach is chair of USC’s SmartState Center for Strategic Approaches to the Generation of Electricity (SAGE), where AI is the driver behind his research team’s work to discover new energy solutions. He is among a vanguard of scientists worldwide focused on producing carbon-free energy from nitrogen, hydrogen and the recycling of carbon from carbon dioxide. He finds AI helpful in accelerating search processes, which saves time and money while allowing for ideas outside the box. His work includes implications for the production of ammonia, a key base material for fertilizer, which is crucial to the global food supply.
News contact: Chris Woodley, cwoodley@mailbox.sc.edu, 803-576-7745

Industry

Yu Qian is a civil and environmental engineering associate professor who specializes in transportation geotechnics and railroad infrastructure-related research. He has examined the challenges of first-responder vehicles stuck in train traffic. His team is developing tailored AI models for a computer vision system to monitor railroad crossings and platforms to spot individuals with potentially suicidal intentions. His focus is on intelligent railroad inspection and maintenance, including heavy haul, urban transit and high-speed railroad. His work with computer vision, edge-computing, and drones is helping develop an autonomous track inspection system to scan and detect for missing or broken components.
News contact: Chris Woodley, cwoodley@mailbox.sc.edu, 803-576-7745

Sourav Banerjee is a mechanical engineering professor who is an expert in nondestructive evaluation and structural health monitoring in the fields of aerospace and civil and mechanical engineering. He works with NASA and the U.S. Navy on technology that employs digital twins and AI. A digital twin is a virtual representation of an object or system that uses simulation, machine learning and reasoning, and that twin lets researchers test a full range of scenarios to improve real-world performance. He is also an expert in structural health monitoring, which is the process of putting into place a damage identification strategy for aerospace and civil and mechanical engineering infrastructure.
News contact: Chris Woodley, cwoodley@mailbox.sc.edu, 803-576-7745

Law

Bryant Walker Smith, an associate professor of law and (by courtesy) engineering, focuses his exploration of the relationship between law and emerging technologies – what he calls the "law of the newly possible" – on the use of artificial intelligence in transportation. As the preeminent academic in the field of automated driving law, he regularly advises cities, states, countries (including as vice chair of the US Department of Transportation's Transforming Transportation Advisory Committee) and the United Nations. He emphasizes that AI must be understood as an instrument of power that will change relationships among governments, companies, individuals, collectives and even animals. In this way, differences between centralized and decentralized systems could be more consequential than differences between humans and machines.
News contact: Andersen Cook, cookea2@mailbox.sc.edu, 803-777-8058

Communications

Shannon Bowen is a futurist and chairs USC’s AI Ethics Advisory Board and a top media commentary source on AI ethics. Her research for the National Science Foundation focused on AI in disaster and crisis communications and the ethical implications of how it is employed in public affairs. A professor in USC’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications, she teaches and researches ethics across corporations, pharmaceutical firms, governmental entities and the public relations industry. She is the founder and executive director of the College of Information and Communications’ Global Strategic Communications Consortium and frequently writes on AI and ethics, AI use in warfare, and misinformation and intelligence/counterintelligence, transhumanism and AI espionage.
News contact: Gregory Hardy, ghardy@sc.edu, 352-362-7052

Alamir Novin researches AI’s effects on human-computer interactions, cognitive science, data science and cybersecurity and artificial general intelligence (AGI) as an assistant professor in the School of Information Science, and can talk about how generative-AI can diminish the public’s understanding of scientific issues. Novin’s research starts with cognitive science (how the mind processes inputs from linguistics, psychology, neuroscience and philosophy) and data science to experiment with computer systems and AI. He has a background in information science, data science and data journalism.
News contact: J. Scott Parker, j.scottparker@sc.edu, 803-777-2696

Kristin Lunz Trujillo of USC’s political science department is administering a national survey in 2024 to investigate how artificial intelligence influences American political attitudes and behavior, with the intention to use that knowledge to help people recognize false or misleading AI-generated content that appears credible.
News contact: Bryan Gentry, brgentry@sc.edu, 434-333-0057