Our PIs
Dr. Peter Youngs
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Dr. Peter Youngs Peter is a professor in the Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education at the University of Virginia. His research interests focus on how teacher preparation, induction, and school social context are associated with beginning teachers’ instructional practices, commitment, and retention. He also studies ways that neural networks can be used to classify activities in video recordings of elementary instruction. Youngs’ research has been funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, National Science Foundation, the Robertson Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and the William T. Grant Foundation. Recent publications have appeared in AERA Open, Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, Journal of Teacher Education, Teachers College Record, and Teaching and Teacher Education. He received the AERA Division K (Teaching and Teacher Education) Early Career Award, he previously served as co-editor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis (2016-18), and he currently serves as co-editor of American Educational Research Journal (2020-25). |
Dr. Scott Acton Scott received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his B.S. degree at Virginia Tech. He is also a Fellow of the IEEE “for contributions to biomedical image analysis.” Currently, Scott is professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia. Professor Acton’s laboratory at UVA is called VIVA - Virginia Image and Video Analysis. They specialize in bioimage analysis problems. The research emphases of VIVA include image analysis in bioimaging, neuroscience, video analysis in education, tracking, segmentation, representation, retrieval, classification, and enhancement. Recent theoretical interests include active contours, graph signal processing and machine learning. Scott has over 300 publications in the image analysis area including the books Biomedical Image Analysis: Tracking and Biomedical Image Analysis: Segmentation. He was the 2018 Co-Chair of the IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging. Scott was recently Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (2014-2018). |
Dr. Scott Acton
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Dr. Jonathan Foster
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Dr. Jonathan Foster Jonathan is Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Albany. He was a postdoctorate research associate in the Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education at the University of Virginia. He completed his Ph.D. in Mathematics Education at the University of Georgia. His dissertation study contributes to the field by jointly considering the specialized and everyday knowledge and practices beginning teachers leverage in supporting students to make explicit mathematical connections. His research interests include mathematics teacher development and beginning teachers’ instructional practices, argumentation, and artificial intelligence in education. |
Dr. Ginger Watson Ginger obtained her PhD. in Instructional Design & Technology from the University of Iowa where she was awarded as a Link Foundation Fellow in Simulation and Training. She currently holds the title of Associate Professor at Old Dominion University. Ginger previously held the title of chief scientist at the Raydon Corporation and National Advanced Driving Simulation (NADS). Her research interests include the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of technology-enhanced learning environments for the purposes of professional preparation with a focus on simulation and artificial intelligence. Ginger’s research efforts have led to over 45 grants and contracts totaling more than $20 million. Recent publications of her intellectual work have appeared in Educational Technology Research and Development, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, and The Journal of Applied Instructional Design. She was a recipient of the Presidential Award from the Association for Educational Communication and Technology. |
Dr. Ginger Watson
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Team Members
James Drimalla, Ph.D. James is a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education at the University of Virginia. He completed his Ph.D. in Mathematics Education at the University of Georgia. His research focuses on artificial intelligence in education, the philosophy of mathematics education, collective argumentation, and students' understanding of mathematical concepts. |
Matthew Korban Matthew is a postdoctorate research associate at the University of Virginia and VIVA Lab. During his Master's studies, he worked on several projects mainly related to recognizing sign language in continuous untrimmed videos. He continued his Ph.D. studies at Louisiana State University and Geometric and Visual Computing Lab, where he worked on several projects including activity recognition, early activity detection, and human motion modeling. He is currently working on a project about recognizing activities in instructional videos. |
Scout Crimmins Scout is a PhD student in the Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education at the University of Virginia. Her research interests focus on teachers’ perceptions on the application of artificial intelligence for the purpose of understanding their instructional practice. Prior to joining the AIAI project, Scout taught in public schools in Washington, DC. |
Mandy Flores-Curley Mandy Flores-Curley, an educator with 14 years of teaching experience, is now a Ph.D. student at the University of Virginia. Her research passions encompass English as a Second Language (ESL) and Dual Language Education, student performance, teacher development, and leveraging artificial intelligence to enhance teaching methods. She has a strong commitment to advancing education and she is on a mission to shape the future of learning and teaching. |
Kayla Reist Kayla is a PhD student in the Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education at the University of Virginia. Her research interests focus on utilizing artificial intelligence to improve teaching quality. Prior to joining the AIAI project, Kayla taught high school English and worked as a research consultant at The Albert Shanker Institute. |
Pawan Gupta Pawan is a Research Specialist in the Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education at UVA. He completed his Ed.M. in Human Development and Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education and worked on several research projects at MIT and Harvard. Pawan is an engineer-turned-educational researcher, and his research interests lie in using multi-modal data and artificial Intelligence in education, teacher education, education policy, and economics of education. |
Former Members
Jacob Elmore
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Faith Peddie
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Nasrin Sadeghzadehyazdi
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Samarth Singh
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Jenni Suriano
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Rachel van Aswegen
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Tyler Woodward
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Advisory Panel
Corey Drake
The Math Learning Center |
Sean Kelly
University of Pittsburgh |
Marios Pattichis
The University of New Mexico |
Jake Whitehill Worcester Polytechnic Institute
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