Tomorrow's Tech, Today's Earth: AI in the Age of Sustainability

#generativeAI #computationalIntelligence

Panel Discussion 

Speakers:

Shaolei Ren is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the

University of California, Riverside. His research broadly focuses on AI, energy, and public

health. His work has generated broader societal impacts, shaping AI policies adopted by

international organizations such as the United Nations, UNESCO, and WHO. Additionally,

his research has driven industry innovations, including the development of the first real-

time water footprint reporting tool for computing. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER

Award (2015) and several paper awards, including at ACM e-Energy (2024, 2016) and IEEE

ICC (2016). He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dr. Sharon Hsiao is Assistant Professor & David Packard endowed junior fellow in the

Department of Computer Science & Engineering at Santa Clara University. Prior to

SCU, Dr. Hsiao was an assistant professor at Arizona State University and Columbia

University, where she established several research projects and taught graduate &

undergraduate level courses. Dr. Hsiao’s research focuses on educational

technologies, computational modeling, visual analytics, and adaptive technology for

personalized learning. Her research methodology involves AI and HCI approaches,

applied data science and machine learning techniques in researching effective

technology to help people learn. Dr. Hsiao actively involves in several international research communities,

including Educational Data Mining (EDM), Learning Analytics & Knowledge (LAK), Artificial Intelligence in

Education (AIED), and European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL). She serves as the

Program Chair of 14th International Conference on Educational Data Mining, Organizing Chair of the 9th of

International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge, and several other leadership and editing

positions. https://webpages.scu.edu/ftp/ihsiao/ 

Irina Raicu directs the Internet Ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied

Ethics. She is a certified information privacy professional, and her work addresses a

wide variety of topics—from online privacy to social media’s impact on society,

from the digital divide to the ethics of encryption, and the many ethical issues

associated with artificial intelligence. Raicu was a member of the Partnership on

AI's first working group on Fair, Transparent, and Accountable AI, and she served as

a member of the initial cohort of the city of San Jose’s privacy advisory task force.

Together with other center staff, Raicu has worked with multiple companies in the process of developing

their responsible tech/responsible AI policies and processes. Her writing has appeared in publications

including The Atlantic, U.S.A. Today, Forbes, MarketWatch, Slate, the San Francisco Chronicle, and she is the

primary contributor to the blog Internet Ethics: Views from Silicon Valley.

(https://www.scu.edu/ethics/about-the-center/people/irina-raicu/) US Local Chapter

Moderator:

Yuhong Liu, Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering,

Santa Clara University. Her research interests include responsible AI, trustworthy computing

and cyber security of emerging applications, such as online social media, Internet-of-things

and Blockchain. She has published over 100 papers on prestigious journals and peer

reviewed conferences. She is currently serving as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions

on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (TCSVT), IEEE Transactions on Service

Computing (TSC), Multimedia Tools and Applications (MTAP), APSIPA Transactions on Signal and Information

Processing (TSIP), and a Youth EBM Editor of the Blockchain: Research and Applications Journal. She serves

as an IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor (2022-2024), and an APSIPA Distinguished Lecturer (2021-

2022). She is the recipient of the 2019 Researcher of the Year Award at School of Engineering, Santa Clara

University, the 2013 University of Rhode Island Graduate School Excellence in Doctoral Research Award, and

the Best Paper award of the IEEE International Conference on Social Computing 2010 (acceptance rate 13%).

(https://www.scu.edu/engineering/faculty/liu-yuhong/)