Featured Breakout Sessions

Each featured session highlights a topic of broad interest and impact within one of our breakout tracks. To ensure that as many participants as possible can take part, these sessions will be offered twice, back-to-back during Breakout Rounds 1 and 2, allowing attendees to experience them without having to choose between competing sessions. Featured sessions will also be recorded and made available after the event, extending the conversation beyond the day itself.

Whether you are interested in cutting-edge research, real-world industry applications, ethical debates, or the future relationship between humans and intelligent technologies, these sessions bring together some of NJIT’s most engaging speakers to explore AI from multiple perspectives.

Browse the tracks below to discover the featured conversations shaping AI Exploration Day. All featured sessions are labeled as such in the Whova app agenda.

1. AI Frontiers: Research, Discovery, and Innovation

• Title- AI-Driven Solar Weather Prediction and Scientific Research
  Description- Solar weather refers to variations in the Sun's activity, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, that send radiation and charged particles into space, which have significant negative impact on the near-Earth space environment and on Earth. In this talk, we present recent advances in AI, including generative AI, explainable AI and trustworthy AI, as well as their applications to solar weather prediction. Forecasting the impact of solar weather on Earth will also be discussed.
  Presenter- Jason Wang, Professor, NJIT

• Title-  Bridging Experiments and Computation in AI-Enabled Materials Discovery
  Description- Materials discovery has been constrained by the intensive experiments required to explore vast structural and chemical spaces. Advances in AI and foundation models, combined with near quantum-accurate methods and autonomous lab frameworks, now enable orders of magnitude increase in materials discovery efficiency. The panel will discuss current progresses and future outlooks in this field from both academic and industrial perspectives.
  Presenter- Nutth Tuchinda, Assistant Professor, NJIT

2. AI in Industry: Transformation and Disruption

• Title- The Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Biomedicine and Healthcare: Transforming Research, Practice, and the Future of Medicine
  Description- AI is rapidly reshaping the landscape of biomedicine and healthcare. Its influence extends far beyond automation or data analytics—it is redefining how diseases are diagnosed, treated, and managed, how biomedical innovations are developed, and how healthcare systems operate at scale. We will provide a comprehensive overview of the collective efforts within the Department of Biomedical Engineering to advance AI research, education, and applications across the biomedical spectrum.
  Presenter- Zhifeng Kou
  Co- Presenters- Jongsang Son, Elisa Kallioniemi, Xianlian Zhou

• Title- AI in Industry: from Prediction to Impact
  Description- AI is transforming industries such as healthcare, finance, advertising, and online publishing. This panel explores the deployment of AI, its economic and societal benefits, and the risks and ethical challenges that arise. Panelists will share research with industrial applications, examining how AI reshapes decision-making, stakeholder relationships and broader ecosystems. It aims to bridge research and real-world applications, highlighting importance and opportunities for responsible AI.
  Presenter- Yi Chen, Professor, NJIT

3. AI for Sustainability, Energy, and the Environment

• Title- The Data Center Next Door: Land Use and Community in the Landscapes of AI
  Description- Amidst the euphoria of AI’s potential to transform human life, we must also consider the transformative impact of its infrastructural needs. In this session, two critics of the contemporary metropolis will interrogate AI from the perspective of land use, water and energy consumption, urban design, and sustainable communities. They will also speculate on AI as the most disruptive technology since the combustion engine, in terms of its potential to reshape where and how we live.
  Presenter- Gabrielle Esperdy
  Co-presenter- Jesse LeCavalier

4. AI Literacy for All: Building Future-Ready Learners

• Title- Integration of Artificial Intelligence Methods into the STEM Educational Experience
  Description- We will start with a short review of the origins and historical development of the discipline of Artificial Intelligence (AI). We will proceed to discuss different models and opportunities for introduction of AI into the STEM classroom and laboratory. To this end, we will review studies on the educational impacts of generative AI on learning and performance of STEM students. We will also review the specific integration of AI methods into the curricula of NJIT's Newark College of Engineering.  
  Presenter- Moshe Kam, Dean of Engineering
  Co-presenters- Pramod Abichandani, Ashish Borgaonkar

• Title- Impressive Imitation: A Corpus Linguistics Perspective on LLM Outputs and the Construction of Meaning in Writing
  Description- In this session, we will discuss the differences and similarities between human-authored writing and LLM-generated texts. I will present findings from a variety of corpus linguistics studies, conducted with colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University, which present empirical evidence of LLM tendencies that are often discussed anecdotally. This research identifies the stylistic features that characterize machine-generated writing alongside those which show writing to be a uniquely human practice. 
  Presenter- Michael Laudenbach

5. Ethics, Equity, and Human Responsibility

• Title- History, AI and the Future of STEM Pedagogy
  Description- We imagine a STEM+ curriculum that foregrounds the humanities and social sciences. As AI shapes research and labor across STEM, narrow technical expertise is fast becoming obsolete. Historical methods that foster creativity, ethical reasoning, and cultural awareness provide the essential preparation needed to anticipate and address the broader human consequences of technological innovation. Far from diminishing humanistic training, AI reveals its importance for the future of STEM+ education. 
  Presenter- Louis Hamilton, Dean, Albert Dorman Honors College, NJIT
  Co-presenter- Burcak Ozludil, Elektra Kostopoulou

6. AI Collaboratives: Education, Policy, and Partnerships

• Title- The Higher Education Strategic Imperative: Building Cross-Sector AI Alliances in the Post-VUCA World
  Description- In the post-VUCA economy, higher education must shift from standalone institutions to ecosystem anchors. This session examines how NJIT’s LDI built a cross-sector AI workforce network across New Jersey as well as with national organizations such as K–12 districts, community colleges, the New Jersey Department of Education, and the New Jersey Department of Labor, Hire Heroes and Jobs for the Future. Participants will explore the necessity of building alliances in the post-VUCA world.
  Presenter- Michael Edmondson, Assoc Provost, Continued Learning, NJIT 

7. The Future Human: Society, Culture, and Identity in an AI World

• Title- AI and Existential Dread
  Description- AI promises progress, but many of us see the darker side: a future where college loses value, jobs disappear, and society relies on the uncertain benevolence of Big Tech. In this talk, I explore the existential dread beneath the hype and what practical steps we can take to adapt, stay relevant, and avoid being left behind as AI reshapes everything
  Presenter- Michael Johnson, President, New Jersey Innovation Institute, NJIT