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AI experts available in variety of disciplines

Artificial intelligence is rapidly entering nearly every sphere of human life. Northwestern University faculty are available to discuss many facets of this fast-evolving paradigm.

Connect with them directly using the contact information below, or reach out to media relations for assistance.

Interview the experts on ChatGPT and artificial intelligence

Dr. Faraz Ahmad

Cardiology, machine learning and AI

Assistant Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) and Preventive Medicine (Health and Biomedical Informatics)

Ahmad is a heart failure cardiologist and associate director of the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute Center for Artificial Intelligence at Northwestern Medicine. His research interests are in the development and implementation of AI-enabled technologies and other digital health solutions to improve the quality of care and patient-centered outcomes for patients with heart failure and other cardiovascular conditions. He has a particular interest in leveraging deep learning and different types of health care data (clinical notes, imaging, diagnostic testing) to improve diagnostic accuracy and the delivery of evidence-based case.

Jeremy Birnholtz

Human/computer interaction

Professor in Communication Studies

Birnholtz’s research focuses on human-computer interaction issues such as attention, online identity and collaboration through the use of technology. He runs the Social Media Lab and investigates how people develop “folk theories,” or simplified explanations of system function that guide their behavior. Even when technically incorrect, folk theories can be a valuable guide in navigating the complexities of AI. 

Dr. Josh Cheema

Cardiology, machine learning and AI

Assistant Professor of Medicine in Cardiology

As an advanced heart failure and transplant cardiologist, Cheema’s clinical interests include taking care of patients with heart failure, as well as patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. His research interests lie in creating, deploying or otherwise utilizing machine learning and AI tools to help provide better care to all Northwestern patients.

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Lee Cooper

AI in diagnostics and medical imaging

Associate Professor of Pathology
Director of Division of Computational Pathology
Director for Center for Computational Imaging and Signal Analytics

Cooper investigates the how AI can improve the accuracy of medical diagnostics with an emphasis on image-based diagnostics and cancer. He brings an engineering perspective to his research and works with the healthcare system to operationalize this technology. Cooper can discuss technology and its impact, and his research has touched on issues including transparency and the interaction between AI and medical experts. An example of his research can be seen in this November 2023 study in Nature Medicine. 

Nick Diakopoulos

Journalism, ethics and AI

Associate Professor in Communication Studies and Computer Science (by courtesy)

Diakopoulos' research is oriented around computational journalism, including projects on AI, automation and algorithms in news production and distribution. He also studies AI, ethics and society and can speak to algorithmic accountability, transparency and impact. He is the author of Automating the News: How Algorithms are Rewriting the Media from Harvard University Press, and he recently participated in a webinar about ChatGPT's impact on journalism and how the technology might change the field.

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Rayvon Fouché

AI impact on the Black community and sports

Professor, Communication Studies and Medill School of Journalism

Fouché’s scholarship explores the multiple intersections and relationships between cultural representation, racial identification and technoscientific design. Fouché has an optimistic view on AI and believes it replicates the past, not predict the future. He specifically investigates how Black people are impacted by AI technology as well as how the technology is shaping sports. In his most recent book, “Game Changer: The Technoscientific Revolution in Sports,” Fouché argues that sports have been radically shaped by an explosion of scientific and technological advances in materials, training, nutrition and medicine dedicated to making athletes stronger and faster.

Dr. Catherine Gao

Using ChatGPT to write scientific research

Instructor of Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care)

In a study available as a preprint on bioRxiv and currently undergoing peer review, Gao and her team found that ChatGPT could successfully produce realistic and convincing scientific abstracts. Gao says this could be used in exciting ways but that additional discussion and exploration from the scientific community is needed to decide its acceptable and optimal use. (Listen to a Feinberg Breakthroughs podcast about their findings.) Gao also is interested in how this technology can be used responsibly in healthcare to assist physicians.

Jeremy Gilbert

Technology and journalism

Knight Professor in Digital Media Strategy

Gilbert explores the intersection of technology and media to understand how new tools and techniques, including content generated through artificial intelligence, will affect the creation, consumption and distribution of media.

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Kris Hammond

AI natural language writing

Bill and Cathy Osborn Professor of Computer Science
Director, Center for Advancing Safety for Machine Intelligence
Director, Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence

As a pioneer in AI and generative language systems, Hammond co-founded Narrative Science, a tech startup that generates stories (told in natural language) from big data. He is an expert in AI safety and ethics, developing human capabilities into machines and integrating AI into all aspects of life. His lab works on AI projects for the judicial system, education and human health and safety. 

Kristi Holmes

AI and information literacy

Director, Galter Health Sciences Library; Professor, Preventive Medicine (Health and Biomedical Informatics); Chief of Knowledge Management, Institute for Augmented Intelligence in Medicine (i.AIM)

As the chief of Knowledge Management for Feinberg's Institute for Augmented Intelligence in Medicine (I.AIM), Holmes believes that, in addition to accessibility, it’s important to determine how ChatGPT will impact larger ecosystems complicated by issues related to information literacy.  

Mohammad Hosseini

Use of large language models in research

Postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Preventive Medicine and an associate editor of the journal of Accountability in Research

Hossein believes banning the use of large language models (LLMs) in research is controversial and unenforceable. He is the author of a recent editorial that suggests ethical guidelines for using LLMs in research, a preprint about using LLMs in scholarly peer reviews and an opinion piece about using LLMs in education.

Maia Jacobs

Human-computer interaction in medicine

Lisa Wissner-Slivka and Benjamin Slivka Professor of Computer Science; Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine

Jacobs uses human-computer interaction methods to design and evaluate technologies to support longitudinal health needs. Her work includes creating personalized interventions that adapt content, resources and interactions to individuals' evolving health needs.

Dr. Abel Kho

Ethical impact on medicine

Director of the Institute for Augmented Intelligence in Medicine (I.AIM) and the Institute for Public Health and Medicine (IPHAM)’s Center for Health Information Partnerships

Kho says he believes having discussions right now about artificial intelligence can help inform new regulations that also ensure tools that utilize the technology remain both accessible and equitable. 

Dr. Adrienne Kline

Cardiology, AI and algorithms

Research Assistant Professor of Surgery (Cardiac Surgery)

Kline is the head of artificial intelligence and engineering at the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute Center for Artificial Intelligence at Northwestern Medicine and said her hope is to affect both the efficiency and reliability with which medicine is practiced. Her research interests are in the application and deployment of artificial intelligence and algorithms into patient care, which has led to the development of novel methods for handling missing data and innovative metrics for evaluating the reliability of machine learning predictions.

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Sam Kriegman

AI-designed robots

Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Kriegman designs, builds and breeds robotic lifeforms to catch a glimpse of life as it may have arisen here on Earth or as it might exist elsewhere in the universe. An AI2050 Fellow and Cozzarelli Prize recipient, his creation of the world's first AI-designed organisms (the "xenobots") triggered considerable global media attention and a tidal wave of public discourse.

Dr. David Liebovitz

AI in clinical medicine

Co-Director, Institute for Augmented Intelligence in Medicine's Center for Medical Education in Data Science and Digital Health; Associate Vice Chair, Clinical Informatics; Associate Professor, General Internal Medicine, Health and Biomedical Informatics

Liebovitz has been teaching clinical informatics for several decades, incorporating new methods for education and applications of AI within clinical patient care. He has been a chief medical information officer at two organizations where he actively implemented AI in clinical medicine. Liebovitz has contributed to publications applying AI methods and data science to analysis of electronic health records data (a recent example is this August 2022 study in the New England Journal of Medicine). He also has served on conference planning committees and presented sessions related to application of AI to healthcare.

Daniel Linna

AI and the law

Director of Law and Technology Initiatives

Linna's teaching and research focus on innovation and technology, including computational law and artificial intelligence. He currently is experimenting with ChatGPT and other large-language models on a chatbot platform that aims to support tenants in rental housing.

Duri Long

Human/AI interaction

Assistant Professor in Communication Studies

Long is a human-centered AI researcher interested in issues surrounding AI literacy and human-AI interaction. She studies how humans interact and learn as a way of informing the design of public AI literacy interventions as well as the development of AI that can interact naturally and improvise creatively with people in complex social environments.

Yuan Luo

AI automation, bias and misinformation

Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine (Health and Biomedical Informatics)

As chief AI officer for the Northwestern Clinical and Translational Sciences (NUCATS) Institute and the Institute for Augmented Intelligence in Medicine (I.AIM) at Feinberg, Luo can discuss ChatGPT and other AI bots’ possible increased risk of spreading misinformation and promoting bias. But ChatGPT can also be used for good, Luo says, helping automate the writing process, which is the speed bottleneck in knowledge generation and dissemination. Ethical and practical gaps still need to be bridged, he says. 

Dr. Sanjiv Shah

AI in cardiology

Neil J. Stone Professor of Medicine (Cardiology); Director, Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine - Center for Deep Phenotyping and Precision Therapeutics

Shah develops novel techniques for machine learning and artificial intelligence for the classification, diagnosis and tracking of cardiovascular diseases. 

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V.S. Subrahmanian

Predictive AI models

Walter P. Murphy Professor of Computer Science
Buffett Faculty Fellow, Buffett Institute for Global Affairs

Subrahmanian is an expert on the intersection between AI and security. He develops AI models to forecast actions and influence outcomes. His AI models have been used to forecast terror attacks and terror network evolution, to reduce poaching, to identify bad actors on social media, to forecast systemic banking crises, to maximize airline profits, to predict if apps are malware or not and to analyze and identify deepfakes. 

Nina Wieda

AI in education

Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Chicago Field Studies Program

Wieda is trained in analyzing daily behaviors through the prism of values and ideas that affect them and can discuss how to use ChatGPT in the classroom, how to get students to engage critically with AI and why it’s best to thoughtfully embrace new technologies rather than rejecting them.

Sepehr Vakil

Education, Ethics, Policy, and AI

Associate professor of Learning Sciences

Vakil is a learning scientist and faculty director of the Master’s in Technology, People, and Policy program and the Technology, Race, Ethics, and Equity in Education (TREE) Lab. He is also currently serving as senior adviser to the Spencer Foundation for its Artificial Intelligence (AI) initiative. His research interests include STEM education (computer science and engineering education), technology ethics and policy, politics of educational justice, cultural processes in learning, and global and international STEM and engineering education. He is also broadly interested in the role of culture, identity, emotion, humor, storytelling, and creativity in learning and development.