Speakers & Presenters

Ioannis Anastasopoulos

Ioannis Anastasopoulos is a third-year doctoral student, studying learning sciences in the Berkeley School of Education. His interests lie in iterating the pedagogy and usability of digital learning environments to enhance student learning. Ioannis has been involved with OATutor and PromptHive since their inception, leading the content creation effort of the project for over five years, as well as working with teachers and instructors to ease integrations of the system into their classrooms.

Carys Atmodjo

Shaily Bajracharya

Shaily Bajracharya recently earned her Master’s in Computational Social Science at UC Berkeley, where she also completed her B.A. in Psychology and Data Science with a minor in Education. She currently works with the Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute (SVEEI) on K-16 data and policy projects focused on improving access and outcomes for first-generation and low-income students. Shaily is interested in how AI tools can be integrated into teaching and learning in ways that support equity, transparency, and genuine understanding.

Michelle Baptiste

An applied linguist, Michelle Baptiste has taught in College Writing Programs  at UC Berkeley since 2002.  In her own research to earn her MA in English as a Second Language from University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, she observed US naturalization interviews and continues to be engaged in examining citizenship--historically and currently.  She served as a US Peace Corps adult literacy volunteer in St. Lucia and has taught multilingual student writers at the University of Hawai'i as well as bilingual (Diné-English) teachers on the Navajo Nation through Northern Arizona University.  On campus she is active with Bay Area Writing Project (BAWP).

Alisa Bettale

Alisa Bettale partners with researchers and educators to develop K–12 curriculum rooted in Berkeley Lab’s cutting-edge science, creating engaging, inclusive experiences that strengthen students’ STEM identity. Previously a high school physics teacher, she is passionate about authentic, hands-on learning. She holds an MEd from Harvard, an MS in Astronomy from San Diego State University, and a BS in Physics (Astrophysics) from Carnegie Mellon University.

Jennifer Brown

Jennifer Brown is an Undergraduate Learning & Research Librarian at UC Berkeley. She holds an M.S. in Information from the University of Michigan, and a B.A. in Media Studies from UC Berkeley. Her research examines academic labor inequities; institutional diversity work through the lens of white, hegemonic workplace performance culture; and critical race pedagogies within library instruction.

Hannah Brown

Hannah Brown is a 2025 graduate of Berkeley’s Data Science Program. She participated in the Data Science Honors Program, where her thesis formed the basis of her presentation on customized chatbots in higher education. Her work examines student perceptions of AI tutors and the pedagogical implications of generative tools.

Breanna May Cabusao

Breanna Cabusao (she/her) is a fourth-year student at UC Berkeley pursuing a B.A. in Data Science and Cognitive Science. She works at the Center for Teaching and Learning as a student consultant and facilitator for the Teaching Excellence Colloquium Program. Her research explores student learning, equity, and AI perceptions in education.

John DeNero

John DeNero focuses on undergraduate education in computer and data science at UC Berkeley, co-developing and teaching two of the campus’s largest courses. His research spans natural language processing and CS education; previously, he was a senior research scientist at Google working on Google Translate. He holds a PhD in EECS from UC Berkeley and an MA in Philosophy from Stanford.

Faith Dukes

Dr. Faith Dukes combines a passion for science and education to design impactful K–12 programs. She previously developed educational initiatives as Education Coordinator at the MIT Museum and served as an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the National Science Foundation (Education & Human Resources).

Jeff Eyet 

Jeff Eyet teaches AI Pedagogy and Strategic Foresight as Professional Faculty at Berkeley Haas and the Fung Institute. He developed the Five-Component Framework for Human-Centered AI Pedagogy and serves as Managing Partner of The Berkeley Innovation Group. He holds an MBA from UC Berkeley.

Meg Everett

Christina V. Fidler

Christina Velazquez Fidler (she/her) is the Head of Digital Collections at Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Christina also teaches web archiving at Wayne State University. She has previous work experience as a software implementation consultant, as the museum archivist at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at UC Berkeley, and prior to her current role, she served as the digital archivist at The Bancroft Library.

Ben Fils

Ben Fils is He has served the UC Berkeley community since 2016 in roles that enhance community safety, support free speech, and contribute to Berkeley’s sense of discovery and innovation in academic scholarship. Ben is a doctoral candidate in the Berkeley School of Education and holds advanced degrees in law and political science. His team has a front row seat to emerging technologies that challenge our collective understanding of academic integrity and invites the campus community to this panel that aims to reexamine those heuristics.

Zhanara Gallegos

Josh Grossman

Josh Grossman is an assistant teaching professor of statistics and data science at UC Berkeley. H spend most of his time thinking about how best to teach Data 100, UC Berkeley's largest upper-division course. H completed his Ph.D. in Computational Social Science at Stanford University’s Department of Management Science & Engineering (MS&E). Before graduate school, he worked at IXL Learning, a K–12 education technology company. 

Sharon Guo

Sharon Guo develops learning experiences that help students achieve their goals. Before joining Haas, she worked as an instructional designer at New York Law School, where she supported the transition of legal education to online and blended formats. She earned her B.S. in Social Studies Education from Boston University and an M.A. in Instructional Technology and Media from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Emily Hellmich 

Dr. Hellmich completed her PhD in Education at the University of California, Berkeley in 2017 and her MA in French Cultural Studies at Columbia University in 2010. Before coming back to Berkeley, she was Assistant Professor of French & Second Language Acquisition and Teaching at the University of Arizona. Dr. Hellmich’s research focuses on the intersection of globalization, digital technology, and language education.

Cody Hennesy

Cody Hennesy (he/him) is the Head of the Social Sciences Division at the UC Berkeley Library, and previously worked as a Computational Research Librarian at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. 

Dave Henderson

Dave Henderson combines the community and integrity of the classroom experience with effective online tools. Before returning to the Bay Area, he worked at USC’s Rossier School of Education, helping design online courses for future urban education leaders. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Modern Spain and has studied across the UC system.

Amy Ho

Amy Ho designs learning experiences for students both inside and outside the classroom. At Haas, she focuses on extending the reach of a Haas education through programs like the Flex MBA. She holds a B.A. in Business Economics from UCLA and an M.A. in Instructional Technology and Media from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Glynda A. Hull 

Dr. Glynda A. Hull is a professor in the School of Education at UC Berkeley. Her research explores literacy, learning technologies, and equity in education.

Angela Hume

Angela Hume is a body autonomy movement historian, critic, and poet. They hold an MFA in Creative Writing from St. Mary’s College of California and a PhD in English from the University of California, Davis. They teach courses on environmental and health justice, feminist and queer storytelling, and American literatures of resistance.

Sharon Inkelas

Larry Jackson

Larry oversees a 17-person team that provides 1:1 career support and programming to Berkeley undergraduate students, graduate students and post-docs. He served on the Board of Directors for the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) and won NACE’s Rising Star Award. He is also an experienced speaker that has contributed to the professional development of career services practitioners through presentations at regional, national, and global conferences including NACE, Midwest ACE, NASPA – Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, and the Global Career Services Summit.

Neha Jag

Neha Jag is a fourth year undergraduate majoring in Molecular and Cell Biology. She has been in BSP since her freshman year and has been a Chem 3A study group leader for BSP for over two years. There she offers peer support in chemistry to fellow BSP students.

Nathan Jandl

Nathan Jandl serves as Director of Sustainability and Carbon Solutions at UC Berkeley. He brings an interdisciplinary background and a deep commitment to building cross-campus partnerships that foster a participatory culture of sustainability. Nathan holds a BA from Middlebury College and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Amin Jazeeri

Paul Jurcys

Tejasvi Kalakota

Teja Kalakota is a Data Science graduate student at UC Berkeley. With a background in Biology, Teja bridges life sciences and technology through research and innovation. An entrepreneur passionate about transforming healthcare with AI, Teja has also worked within healthcare systems to develop data-driven tools that improve operational efficiency and patient outcomes.

Joseph Kearns

Joseph Kearns (he/him) is Manager of Instructional Design and Innovation and part of the Futures Thinking group at Research, Teaching, and Learning.

Ben Kerbs

Ben Kerbs (he/him)  is a program advisor and study group coordinator for the Biology Scholars Program (BSP). He has a background in plant science and has taught at botanical gardens and in the high school setting. He now enjoys discussing pedagogy with BSP study group leaders who offer support to undergraduate students in the program.

Amina Kirby

Amina Kirby (she/her) is a Senior AV/IT Engineer at Berkeley Law. She developed the AV Help Bot, a prompt-driven AI tool that provides faculty and students with rapid classroom technical assistance. Her work demonstrates how custom AI solutions can transform academic support services through accessibility and collaboration.

Dana Karout

Dana Karout is a PhD candidate in the Department of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. Her research examines the cultural and pedagogical implications of generative AI in human communication and learning. She also designs leadership-development programs across the U.S. and Middle East. 

Melissa Ko

Dr. Melissa Ko earned her S.B. in Biology at MIT and PhD in Cancer Biology at Stanford University. As Assessment and Curriculum Design Specialist at the Center for Teaching and Learning, she researches active learning, grading, and Generative AI in STEM education. Her work supports inclusive and data-informed teaching practices.

Kasra Lekan

Kasra Lekan is a researcher working with Dr. Zachary Pardos at UC Berkeley on adaptive learning and AI in education. His work focuses on using AI to improve student pathways through personalized tutoring systems and data-driven feedback.

Miles Lincoln

Miles Lincoln (he/him) is the Technical Project Lead for the Research, Teaching, & Learning DevOps team. Their teams provide a wide range of services and programs in support of research, teaching, and learning on campus—including management of bCourses, academic integrity tools, and instructional technology pilots.

José Ramón Lizárraga 

Dr. José Ramón Lizárraga has over a decade of experience supporting the School of Education at UC Berkeley. He specializes in speculative pedagogies and AI-supported learning design, with a commitment to equity and future-oriented education.

Emrie Loh

Emrie Loh is an undergraduate Data Science Major at UC Berkeley with a strong focus in machine learning, data analysis, decision-making, and pedagogy. Emrie is currently the Content Lead of Data C100, one of the largest upper-division classes at UC Berkeley and flagship Data Science course within the Data Science major.

Ken Lutz

Ken collaborates with campus leadership across research, IT, teaching, and administration in order to cultivate solutions for a robust computational research infrastructure that supports our campus’ innovative research and teaching. His current interests include the design and implementation of the Global Data Plane, a secure data communications and storage infrastructure

Eric Y. Ma

Dr. Eric Y. Ma is an assistant professor in Physics and Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley and currently holds the Georgia Lee Chair in Physics. His research focuses on probing and engineering wave–matter interaction and developing algorithms to advance AI applications in science and technology.

Tara Mason

Dr. Tara Mason (she/her) is the Universal Design for Learning Consultant at the Center for Teaching and Learning, providing faculty development for inclusive, accessible, and assets-based pedagogy, with a special focus on challenges for students with disabilities. Before joining UC Berkeley, she directed a special education teacher preparation program in Colorado and worked as a K-12 educational professional.

Catherine J. McChrystal

Catherine McChrystal (she/her) is the Learning Tools Team Lead for the Learning Environments & Tools team in Research, Teaching & Learning (RTL) at UC Berkeley. She holds a master's degree in Educational Technology and is currently pursuing an Ed.D. in Learning & Instruction. Prior to joining RTL, she served as an instructional designer at UC Berkeley and as the training program lead for the YouTube Policy team.

Rick McGeer

Patrick (Rick) McGeer is a computer scientist and engineer specializing in distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and data analytics platforms. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley. 

TJ McLeish

Thomas J. McLeish (TJ McLeish) teaches in the MDes program at UC Berkeley and the California College of the Arts, where he teaches graduate courses in AI prototyping and emerging design practices. An MIT Media Lab alumnus, his background spans AI systems, prototyping, and behavioral modeling—from developing an AI-based design assistant at the Media Lab to building machine-learning models from distributed sensing data as CTO of Iota Partners. 

Arnav Mehta

Becky Miller

Becky Miller is the Natural Resources & Environmental Sciences Librarian at the Bioscience, Natural Resources & Public Health Library.

Sage Miller

Sage Miller just graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Cognitive Science and minor in Spanish. She now works at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where she does curriculum development and educational research for their high school data science and ML program. She is mentored by Alisa Bettale, the content and instruction manager of the K-12 team at Berkeley Lab, and Dr. Faith Dukes, the program director.   

Meenakshi Mittal

Meenakshi Mittal is a fifth-year EECS M.S. student at UC Berkeley advised by Professor Narges Norouzi. Her research focuses on AI applications in education, including the Askademia system, which provides context-aware answers to student questions during lectures.

Julie C. Moss

Julie C. Moss (MFA, MAEd) is an instructional designer at Berkeley Public Health Online, where she supports development of student-centered online learning experiences. Julie has a 20 year background in teaching online university courses in composition and business writing.

Rose Niousha

Rose Niousha is a third-year PhD student in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on AI for education, including the 61A Bot project, an LLM-based tutor supporting thousands of students in introductory programming.

Narges Norouzi

Narges Norouzi received her Ph.D. and M.A.Sc. in The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto, Canada. Her research interests include Computational Biology, Biometric Systems, Machine Learning, Statistical Signal Processing with applications in Image Processing, Pattern Recognition, and Adaptive Systems.

Catherine Park

Dr. Catherine Park's research examines how Mandarin–English dual immersion programs intersect with the sociospatial politics of cities and transnational flows of capital, people, and power. She holds a B.A. in English Literature and Psychology from Swarthmore College and an M.A. in China Studies from Zhejiang University, and previously taught in NYC public high schools.

Manooshree Patel

No Bio

Zachary A. Pardos

Dr. Zachary (Zach) Pardos is an Associate Professor of Education at UC Berkeley and directs the Computational Approaches to Human Learning (CAHL) lab. His research investigates adaptive learning and AI-supported advising to expand pathways in higher education. His OATutor project (oatutor.io), an open-source intelligent tutoring system, is integrated into several introductory STEM courses at Cal, SJSU, and Mission Community College, while his AI for transfer work is being utilized by several systems of higher education to improve credit mobility.

Sandra Rogers

Dr. Sandra (Sand) Rogers brings her passion for accessibility and inclusion to support faculty course design and student learning. She previously worked for the Center for Teaching and Learning, where she co-designed fully online summer courses and provided training. Sandra is a futurist and participates in future thinking activities with a cohort in Research, Teaching, and Learning. Dr. Rogers earned her MAT at the University of Alabama and her PhD in instructional design at the University of South Alabama.

Michelle Ruiz

Michelle Ruiz (EdD) is an instructional designer with a decade of experience creating effective, engaging online learning. She has led instructional design for university-level courses in the health sciences and public health at the University of San Francisco and UC Berkeley Public Health. Her doctoral work focuses on designing online instruction in science and mathematics for adult learners.

Meredith Sadin

Dr. Meredith Sadin Meredith Sadin is an Assistant Research Professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, where she teaches graduate-level courses involving both team-based and individual client policy projects. As a Faculty Affiliate at the Possibility Lab, her work focuses on improving government service delivery, community engagement, and addressing inequality, with a commitment to bridging academic research and public impact.

Charles Sarno

Charles Sarno is a Lecturer of Sociology at Berkeley, where he has taught for the last four year,  and a Professor of Sociology at Dominican University of California.  He has been teaching for over 25 years,  with main  areas of interest in the Sociology of Religion as well as Deviance and Social Control. 

Thomas Schutzius

Dr. Thomas Schutzius is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley and is part of the Energy Science & Technology (ES&T) group. His research and teaching interests intersect the multidisciplinary fields of energy, surface science and engineering, and thermofluidics. In 2020 he received the ETH “Golden Owl” Award for excellent teaching and was a nominee for the KITE Award 2022 recognizing innovation in teaching.

Hallie Smith

Hallie Smith is a Postdoc working in the Graduate Division.  

Ben Spanbock

Ben Spanbock has been teaching writing, reading, and research courses with the University of California for over twenty years, and at Cal for over ten. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in English from Reed College and a Master's Degree and Ph.D. in Literature from UC, Santa Cruz. His interests include multimodality in composition, AI image generation as a translation practice, authenticity and the digital other, and developing holistic pedagogical strategies that facilitate student-driven discovery. He is the founder and CEO of Authent, where he designed and launched a product to help better identify human engagement with the writing process.

Samantha Teremi

Samantha Teremi is the Licensing Librarian at the University of California, Berkeley's Library, where she negotiates contracts for licensed electronic resources, including preserving AI usage rights. She also recently co-authored an open access book published through the Association of Research Libraries, called "E-Resource Licensing Explained: An A-Z Licensing Guidebook for Libraries."

Tom Tripp

Tom Tripp guides Haas Digital’s exploration of educational technologies that best serve students and faculty. Over the past decade at Berkeley Haas, he has led initiatives such as Virtual Classrooms, the Cheit Hall Classroom Technology Refresh, automated lecture capture, and the design and implementation of Chou Hall’s award-winning classroom technology. 

Burcu Tung

Dr. Burcu Tung, a member of the Berkeley community since 2002, began her journey studying for her PhD in anthropology and has since worn numerous hats, from lecturing to research coordination to facilitation. Embedding equity, inclusion, and excellence in her work, she approaches policy questions with a focus on community and impact. As an academic integrity specialist, she is particularly interested in the ethical dilemmas in the use and adaptation of GenAI in teaching and learning as well as the biases introduced to university procedures in the context of suspected use cases. 

Kimberly Vinall

Dr. Vinall received her PhD in Education at the University of California, Berkeley and her MA in Hispanic Literature at the University of Arizona. Prior to assuming her current position, Dr. Vinall was a Spanish language program coordinator at the University of Michigan and a tenured faculty of Spanish at De Anza College. Dr. Vinall’s research in applied linguistics, second language acquisition, and pedagogy includes the areas of intercultural education, textbook analysis, critical pedagogy, and uses of literary texts and digital tools in the world languages curriculum.

Allison Wang

Scott Wallin

Scott Wallin is a Continuing Lecturer in the College Writing Programs at UC Berkeley. Teaching and research interests include performance theory, disability studies, theater, critical race theory, and social practice.  At UC Berkeley, he has taught many scholarly courses in critical reading, writing and research and studio courses in acting, as well as directed several award-winning productions. He previously taught in the interdisciplinary arts at Stanford University. Scott has also worked as a psychiatric social worker and grass-roots community facilitator in international development.