- Zorina Khan, William D. Shipman Professor of Economics, is identifying AI tools for training students in the Digital Economics and Artificial Intelligence class while exploring their application to "big data" historical research analysis
- Bobak Kiani, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, is investigating the effectiveness of AI tutors to support advanced undergraduate mathematics and computer science learning
- Shu-chin Tsui, Professor of Asian Studies and Cinema Studies, is exploring AI applications throughout the course design and teaching process
- Keegan Terek, Visiting Lecturer in Middle Eastern and North African Studies, is using AI text-to-speech tools (ElevenLabs) to create pedagogical materials to support students' interpretive and interactive communication skills in Elementary Arabic courses
- Jonathan Tunstall, Visiting Assistant Professor of Education, is testing Canva Magic Studio, Grammarly, and Formative to increase student engagement
- Margaret Boyle, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies, is comparing translation capabilities of DeepL and Taia for Spanish-English and English-Spanish translation to understand how students may interact with these tools and evaluate their effectiveness for historical texts
Research Projects
Christian Puma Ninacuri, Lecturer in Hispanic Studies
Through thoughtful integration of an AI tool into intermediate Spanish courses, this project aims to reduce student anxiety while enhancing language proficiency, complementing rather than replacing human interaction. This project pilots My Conversation Trainer, an AI-powered platform that allows students to practice speaking and listening skills in a low-stakes environment outside of class. The tool provides personalized, real-time feedback and enables instructors to customize conversation scenarios reflecting real-world language use. Piloting the project over the summer, research assistants Cameron Shelly, Sharifa Hurnawar, and Liam Rodríguez highlighted the platform's judgment-free practice opportunities and ability to reinforce classroom learning.
Special Collections & Archives
Describing and transcribing historical materials is slow, labor-intensive work. To explore solutions, special collections and archives staff at Bowdoin, Bates, and Colby convened for a full-day workshop to examine the implications of generative AI for archives and archival research. Tom Scheinfeldt, Professor of Digital Media and Design at the University of Connecticut, served as the keynote speaker and has published his remarks. Participants shared demonstration projects illustrating the promise and pitfalls of using generative AI to automate the description of historic photographs and transcription of manuscripts, including a recently discovered letter from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The workshop sparked deep conversations and future collaborations between institutions.
Additional projects funded by Explore AI grants:
Erik Nelson, Professor of Economics
For nearly 30 years, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has produced a national inventory of US greenhouse gas emissions and removals. Today, this inventory faces an uncertain future as key data collection programs and reporting processes risk being downsized or discontinued. This project seeks to develop an AI expert that can reproduce the EPA’s inventory methods, ensuring that accurate, transparent, and publicly available emissions data continue even if official reporting is disrupted.
Nadia Celis, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies
As AI systems become increasingly autonomous, it is urgent to examine how they reflect and reproduce cultural values. This project brings a humanistic, gender-aware lens to the study of generative AI, interrogating how conceptions of “love”—a powerful vector of intimacy, care, and control—are encoded in large language models (LLMs). Combining interpretive analysis and computational experimentation, it investigates the textual bases that shape LLMs’ responses and explores how gendered power dynamics manifest in AI-generated narratives about love. Building on prior research into the cultural interplay of love, gender, and power, the project aims to prototype a platform that allows users to probe bias in generative AI, test ethical scenarios, and evaluate strategies for generating more equitable outputs.
Liam Taylor, Doherty Kent Island Postdoctoral Scholar in Biology
Leach's Storm-Petrel populations are declining, but the more we learn, the more we disturb them. This project explores how artificial intelligence can be used to help break this fundamental tradeoff. By training AI models on 70 years of data from Kent Island, researchers will be able to detect critical biological events such as egg laying, hatching, chick growth, using only low-disturbance sensors. Solar-powered devices will stream real-time data to interactive dashboards, allowing scientists to monitor vulnerable seabirds without the intrusive methods traditional research requires. This project pioneers conservation technology that protects wildlife while advancing scientific understanding.
Abigail Killeen, Professor of Theater
Artificial Intelligence is not intelligent, but it is present, powerful, and pervasive. Staging Intelligence uses Shakespeare in performance to throw the realities introduced and perpetuated by AI into sharp relief. By juxtaposing machine learning methodologies with some of Shakespeare’s most celebrated work, audiences will encounter a thoughtful exploration of generative AI’s possibilities—and its dangers—in real time, in community.