UMBC CSEE professor Mehdi Kiani and his colleagues and students are developing personalized and precise treatments to improve patients' quality of life using AI, wearable tech, and other innovations. They recently teamed up with colleagues at New York Institute of Technology and Pennsylvania State University to develop a system that combines state-of-the-art, millimeter-sized medical implants, computational models, and machine learning to better monitor and treat stomach disorders. 

The NIH-funded "CyberGut" project will use physics-informed neural networks that combine data-driven learning with fundamental physical laws. "When enhanced with human-like learning strategies, such as self-learning and adaptive optimization, these networks can evolve into significantly more powerful analytical tools," Penn State collaborator Farnaz Tehranchi says.

Using AI to Launch and Scale Your Startup

12-1 pm March 4, 2026, University Center 302, UMBC

AAAI recently started a yearly competition for short 2-3 minute videos on AI for the general public. The goal is to create positive videos that help spread informative, accurate, and timely information about AI research and applications for the general public One of this year's winners was What Actually is AI which gives a good three-minute overview of the field.  See the full list of AAAI Educational AI Video Winners since the program began in 2024.

When AI Gets in the Way: Designing for Struggle in the Age of the Helpful Assistant

12-1pm ET Wednesday, Feb 11, 2026, online

Register here

Accessible by Design, Joy by Default: Leisure as a First-Order Accessibility Problem

Eminent Scholar Talk with Dr. Gillian Hayes, UC Irvine

12-1pm Fri., Feb. 6, ITE 459, UMBC

Refreshments provided for those that RSVP

Accessibility research has made substantial progress in education, work, and health, yet leisure—play, sport, gaming, creative expression, and shared enjoyment—often remains underemphasized or treated instrumentally. The World Leisure Organization's Charter for Leisure states, "Everyone…has the right to adequate time for rest and for the pursuit of leisure activity."  This talk explores research that understands leisure as a first-order accessibility concern rather than a secondary benefit. Taking this principle seriously invites a broader view of access as supporting dignity, self-determination, and flourishing. Drawing on a body of human-centered computing research, I examine accessibility challenges and opportunities in leisure-focused contexts: tangible technologies for blind outrigger paddlers navigating dynamic aquatic environments; digital tools that support families in managing ADHD-related self-regulation while preserving connection; and work on autism and gaming that foregrounds play on one's own terms. Across these cases, leisure settings highlight important design considerations like sensory negotiation, social coordination, challenge, and joy. By treating leisure as essential for everyone, we can think holistically about what accessibility means in everyday life.

Gillian Hayes is a Chancellor's Professor and the Kleist Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. Her research sits at the intersection of human-centered computing, accessibility, and mobile and ubiquitous computing with a particular focus on how interactive technologies can support agency, dignity, and flourishing in everyday life. Across her work, she has focused on community-engaged approaches that bring in a variety of voices to the design process who may not typically have access. Through these participatory and interdisciplinary methods, her research examines how technologies can better accommodate sensory diversity, social connection, and self-determination. When she is not doing her day job of vice provost of academic personnel or working with her students and post-docs in research, she can be found baking cakes, reading science fiction and YA dystopia, volunteering, playing with her kids, or walking her 100-pound lapdog.

Encouraging Academic Integrity: A Discussion of Cheating, Grading, and Course-Level Policies in the Era of AI

Chapters from Teaching with AI by Bowen & Watson
12-1pm ET, Tue. Feb. 24, 2026, Online 

UMBC's Faculty Development Center will host an online discussion of three chapters from the newly revised book Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning, 2nd Edition (2025), by José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson. It will focus on Chapter 8 "Cheating and Detection", Chapter 9 "Policies", and Chapter 10 "Grading and (Re-)Defining Quality" (pp. 152-205) that deal with academic integrity, policies, and grading in the era of AI. 

This session is open to UMBC faculty and staff only. Participants can access the ebook online at any time before the session through the AOK library. 

Get more information and register here

Humanists Talk about AI: A conversation with Eric Brown and Blake Francis

Fabio Anza, an assistant professor in UMBC's Department of Physics, Quantum Science Institute and Cybersecurity Institute, has won an Amazon Research Award to develop Physics Co-Pilot—a scientific AI assistant that combines large language model orchestration with reliable computational algorithms to address critical bottlenecks in modern physics research.
Physics Co-Pilot takes a fundamentally different approach from current AI code generation systems. Rather than having language models write code—which can produce unreliable results—the system uses LLMs only for natural language understanding, while delegating all computational work to pre-written, validated algorithms.
Read more about his award and project here.