Virtual AI Lecture Series Exploring Practical Applications—Indraneel Chakraborty 9/26
2025-09-26 14:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | Zoom (online)
Hosted by Joseph Johnson and Mitsunori Ogihara, this new webinar series promotes the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) among University of Miami faculty, staff, and students, and the surrounding community.
Each session explores practical applications of AI in research, business, and everyday life. The content of these lectures is tailored for a general, non-technical audience and concludes with a Question and Answer session. All lectures take place via ZOOM on Fridays from 2:00 to 4:00 PM, and are free and open to the public. Each session has a separate registration link. An email confirmation containing the ZOOM link will be sent upon completion of registration.

September 26 | Watch Now

Indraneel Chakraborty, PhD
D E P A R T M E N T C H A I R a n d P R O F E S S O R
Finance Department
MIAMI HERBERT BUSINESS SCHOOL
Dr. Chakraborty received his Ph.D. in finance from Wharton, an M.S. from MIT, and a B.Tech. from Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (President of India Gold Medalist). He has worked for Citadel Investments and Citigroup Global Markets Inc.’s fixed income divisions. Dr. Chakraborty has won multiple awards for his research and teaching. He received the excellence in teaching award in the Master of Science in Finance program each year from 2018 to 2023). In 2018, Poets and Quants recognized him as one of the top 40 under 40 business school professors. Read more . . .

October 17 | Watch Now

Tom Collins, PhD
A S S O C I A T E P R O F E S S O R
Music Engineering Technology
FROST SCHOOL OF MUSIC
Tom is an Associate Professor of Music Engineering Technology within the Music Engineering program at the Frost School of Music and Principal Investigator of the Music Computing and Psychology Lab (situated in the Frost School of Music). His research concerns the development and application of machine learning techniques for/to music-analytical and music-generative tasks, with projects leading to research papers, reusable code, and collaborations with upcoming and GRAMMY Award-winning artists on songs co-created with AI. The lab also works on audio/music in extended reality (XR/AR/VR), AI for podcasting and game audio, and pattern discovery algorithms applied to coordinated movement in music and athletics.
Dr. Collins has a strong track record in the supervision of PhD students—training them and helping them pursue careers in industry or academia, with recent graduates joining ByteDance, Sony Interactive Entertainment, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
In terms of teaching, Dr. Collins offers courses on electronic production technologies, research methods, and music artificial intelligence. Read more . . .

October 31 | Video Link forthcoming . . .

Joseph Johnson, PhD
A S S O C I A T E P R O F E S S O R
Marketing Department
MIAMI HERBERT BUSINESS SCHOOL
Dr. Johnson teaches Marketing Analytics, New Product Development, Strategic Brand Management and a doctoral seminar on quantitative methods for marketing management. He has thirty-two years of experience, divided between academia and industry, in computerization and empirical models for manufacturing, supply chain and marketing. His current research focuses on the use of AI and text mining tools as a decision aid for managers. Dr. Johnson has created and collaborated in the development of:

Deep learning algorithms for advertising design and testing
Brand management tools using text mining
Customer satisfaction and service quality measurement tools using text mining
Dynamic optimization methods for retail promotions
Media planning tools for big Pharma
Digital media analytics for non-profit organizations
Clinic scheduling model for UM’s clinics
Risk models for predicting post-surgery health outcomes. Read more . . .

November 14 | Video Link forthcoming . . .

Reynaldo Sanchez, MM
A S S O C I A T E D E A N
Strategic Initiatives + Innovation
A S S O C I A T E P R O F E S S O R
Music Business + Entertainment
FROST SCHOOL OF MUSIC
Dean Sanchez is a multi-faceted educator and musician. As the Director of the Bruce Hornsby Creative American Music Program, he has been responsible for expanding the educational opportunities offered by the Frost School of Music overall. An accomplished multi-tasker, he also serves as Director of the Bruce Hornsby Creative American Music Program, an innovative performing and songwriting program curriculum developed with Frost School alumnus Bruce Hornsby to incorporate both American roots music and contemporary composition. The program has become one of the School’s fastest growing areas of study. It also offers those with an interest in electronic music performance an opportunity to become full music majors, a first for a major music school in the U.S. Read more . . .

February 20 | Register Now

Andres Sawicki, JD
P R O F E S S O R O F L A W
Director, Business of Innovation, Law, & Technology concentration
SCHOOL OF LAW
D I R E C T O R
Data Ethics & Society
FROST INSTITUTE FOR DATA SCIENCE AND COMPUTING
Prof. Sawicki teaches in the area of intellectual property. His primary research projects explore the extent to which IP can help solve problems in the production of inventions and expressive works. He is particularly interested in the complex psychology of creativity, and in the difficulty of coordinating multiple creative collaborators. Professor Sawicki’s research also examines the interaction among distinct patent doctrines.
Professor Sawicki graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with S.B. degrees in Brain & Cognitive Sciences and Science, Technology, & Society. He then earned his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 2006, where he was an Articles Editor for the Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. After graduation, he clerked for the Honorable Robert D. Sack of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. From 2007 through 2010, he worked as an associate in the New York office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. His practice focused on intellectual property litigation, especially Hatch-Waxman Act pharmaceutical patent cases. Prior to his appointment at Miami Law, Professor Sawicki was a Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School.
His work has been published by leading journals, including Cornell Law Review, William & Mary Law Review, and The University of Chicago Law Review, among others. Read more . . .

March 20 | Register Now

Ingrid Vasiliu-Feltes, MD
L E C T U R E R
Business Technology Department
MIAMI HERBERT BUSINESS SCHOOL
Prof. Dr. Ingrid Vasiliu-Feltes is a visionary leader operating at the intersection of academia, business, government and not-for-profit sectors, recognized globally for her deep tech diplomacy and digital ethics efforts.
With over two decades of executive experience, she has held numerous high-impact leadership roles and has extensive complex system integration expertise, driving the development of responsible, inclusive, diverse, sustainable AI, blockchain and other deep tech innovation ecosystems at a regional, national or international level. Her unique background positions her as a thought leader on how emerging or frontier technologies are posing unique ethical challenges and are reshaping law, regulatory frameworks, corporate governance, risk management, compliance and enterprise digital strategy.
She is an alumna of MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia University, and University of Miami’s Herbert Business School. In addition, she is a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, holding executive certifications in AI, Blockchain, Finance, Mediation, Tech Diplomacy, Human Rights, and Ethics. Dr. Vasiliu-Feltes has served as an expert advisor to numerous Fortune 100 and 500 companies, US DOD, IEEE, NIST, and EU, UN or G20-affiliated organizations, guiding them on strategic decisions around digital transformation, digital risk governance, digital trust, and digital cyber-ethics orchestration. Read more . . .
Read a NEWS@TheU PROFILE of Dr. Vasiliu-Feltes: “We have to rethink everything”

April 10 | Registration Link Forthcoming . . .

April Mann, MD
D I S T I N G U I S H E D S E N I O R L E C T U R E R
and Director of the Writing Center
Department of Writing Studies
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

April Mann, EdD, is Director of the Writing Center and is a Distinguished Senior Lecturer in the Department of Writing Studies. She also provides grant-writing support to the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) at the Miller School of Medicine. April has been facilitating the College of Arts and Sciences’ Summer Writing Institute with her colleague Adina Sanchez-Garcia since 2015. The Institute helps faculty throughout the college reimagine the ways they can use writing in their courses to improve their students’ disciplinary learning. She and her colleagues are in the process of initiating a Writing Enriched Curriculum program to support faculty in other disciplines who want to effectively use writing assignments in their teaching.
For the past two years, she has been co-facilitating a Faculty Working Group for Teaching with AI. This community of practice brings faculty together to discuss their innovative work with AI in the classroom. She also presented at the Teaching in the Age of Artificial Intelligence 2024 Conference. April is co-author of several publications, most recently “The linguistic leap: Understanding, evaluating, and integrating AI in language education.” Journal of Language Teaching, (with colleagues Shai Cohen, Ludovic Mompelat, and Logan Connors). She has several manuscripts currently under contract or under consideration with colleagues in the Writing Studies Department and the School of Education and Human Development. She is also co-author (with colleagues Ava Brillat and Matthew Kaeiser) of “Crossing the Bridge: Writing and Research Bridge Programming for an Intensive English Program” in PILH: Information Literacy and Writing Studies, Volume II – Upper Level and Graduate Studies. Ed. Grace Veach. Purdue University Press, 2019. She is also the author of “Structure and Accommodation: Autism and the Writing Center”, in Autism Spectrum Disorders in the College Composition Classroom: Making Writing Instruction more Accessible for all Students. Eds. Walsh, Lynda and Gerstle, Val. Marquette University Press, 2011. In addition, she was also a contributor to and reader for Composing Inquiry: Methods and Readings for Investigation and Writing. Margaret Marshall, Prentice Hall, 2004.
