Shashank Sonkar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Central Florida and a faculty member of the UCF Institute of Artificial Intelligence. His research lies at the intersection of AI, NLP, and computational modeling of human cognition. His lab aims to develop AI systems that can understand human knowledge and adapt intelligently to individual needs, with education serving as a central application for advancing personalized learning at scale.
His research addresses three interconnected challenges: aligning LLMs with effective pedagogical strategies, modeling student knowledge and misconceptions, and developing reliable, calibrated methods for automated assessment. He is also a Co-Principal Investigator on a National Science Foundation project developing large-scale multimodal datasets of student mathematical problem-solving behavior.
Before joining UCF, Shashank earned his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rice University, where he was advised by Richard G. Baraniuk. He was also a visiting scholar at ETH Zürich. His research has appeared at leading conferences, including NeurIPS, ACL, EMNLP, EACL, AACL, AIED, EDM, COLING, and LAK. He holds a B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.