Insights

Emeritus Professor, University of California, Irvine; President’s Professor of Rhetoric, Loyola Marymount University

A rhetorical theorist and prolific scholar whose papers are held by the University of California, Steve is Fulbright scholar and recipient of numerous research fellowships, including from the NEH and from the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

Founder & CEO of psyML

A research psychologist and expert in psychometric tools, machine learning, and programming, Galen is the intellectual and technological innovator behind such human-technology interfaces as E-Harmony.

Professor and Kusama Endowed Chair, Stony Brook University

Stephanie Dinkins, the inaugural winner of the LG Guggenheim Award, is a transmedia artist whose work on AI and race has been featured in The New York Times, Wired, the BBC, Art in America, and many others.

Director of Center for Rhetorical Science Communication Research on Artificial Intelligence; and the Klaus Tschira Professor of Rhetoric and Knowledge Communication and Department Chair of the Rhetoric Department of Tübingen University (Germany)

Olaf Kramer is Professor of Rhetoric and Knowledge Communication at the Department of General Rhetoric, Head of the Research Center for Science Communication, and one of the editors of the journal Science Notes and the book series neue rhetorik / new rhetoric published by DeGruyter. Since 2021, Kramer has also been the spokesperson of the RHET AI Center for Science Communication on Artificial Intelligence.

Professor of Text Analytics, Pardee RAND Graduate School

Bill, a rhetoric PhD, is helping the US Army develop a dedicated chatbot and was recently commissioned to produce a report for the Department of Defense on the ethics of persuasion in technology.

Founder, Center for Connection

NYT Bestselling author Tina Bryson has theorized the role of story-telling in emotional self-regulation and consults widely with major corporations.

Emeritus Piper Professor and Quondam Lillian Redford Chair of Rhetoric and Composition, TCU

Co-founder and former President of the American Society for the History of Rhetoric, Rich worked with artificial intelligence faculty at Carnegie Mellon to integrate rhetoric into AI systems.

Dean, School of Communication and Journalism; Director, Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, Stony Brook University

A visible public figure in the field of science communication and quantitative communication research, Laura has trained thousands of scientists in ethical communication and rhetoric through the Alda method

Dean’s Professor of Humanities and William P. Tolley Distinguished Teaching Professor , Syracuse University

Board member of numerous professional societies including the Association of Rhetoric and Writing Studies, Gwen has served as chair of the CCCC, the largest humanities conference in the US, and President of Rhetoric Society of America, the first African American elected to that position.

NBC Universal and Amazon screenwriter, showrunner, executive producer, and novelist whose movies have grossed nearly a billion dollars worldwide. Creator of the Chicago suite of network shows, he is also a best-selling novelist.

Project coordinator of the Tübingen Center for Rhetorical Science Communication Research on Artificial Intelligence

Markus is a research associate at the Department of General Rhetoric and is in charge of the scientific coordination of the RHET AI Center. There he also heads the "communicative competence" research unit. He regularly develops and teaches continuing education formats on science communication - both for the RHET AI Center and in the certificate program "Science Communication and Media Competence", which he set up and now directs.One of his current research interests is the interplay of rhetoric and generative AI, especially with regard to co-creative writing.

Emerging Technologies Coordinator and Senior Lecturer, Stony Brook University

Cynthia's research focuses on rhetoric in social media and gaming. In her role at Stony Brook, she orients and helps faculty integrate the massive technological changes that are affecting the teaching of writing and rhetoric.

IDEA Fellow, Stony Brook University

Matthew Salzano is Stony Brook’s IDEA Fellow in Ethical AI, Information Systems, and Data Science and Literacy applied to Complex Structures and Networks. He is a scholar of rhetoric and digital culture with a particular emphasis on how digital technology, including artificial intelligence, impacts and interacts with social justice and participatory practices of deliberation, argumentation, and protest.

Associate Professor, Program in Writing and Rhetoric, Stony Brook University

International leader in the field of transnational rhetorics, Shyam proposes that non-Western rhetorical traditions and theories may be the key to revitalizing democracy. He is creator of an online, modular writing pedagogy system, MASLOW, that has been deployed across the world to improve writing outcomes.

Professor, Department of Languages and Indigenous Studies, Bemidji State University

National leader in the movement to expand access to native languages, Tony has launched a series of initiatives to support teaching of indigenous language rights and has served as editor to the longest running indigenous language journal in the country. His most recent book, The Language Warrior’s Manifesto, has driven the movement to mainstream indigenous languages.

Principle Member, Sandia National Labs

Mark, a PhD in electrical engineering, is a Principal Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories in the Critical Infrastructure Systems Department.

Professor, Linguistics; Director, DartWrite, Institute for Writing and Rhetoric, Dartmouth College; Research Professor, Universite de Lille, France

Former director of Dartmouth’s Institute for Writing and Rhetoric and Fulbright Research Scholar, Tiane is an international leader in computational rhetoric and language coding.

Eric Burgess is a creative technologist working at the intersection of social and data sciences. He has served as Chief Product Officer for psyML and NEON ID, and was the Senior Vice President of Product for Soulmates.AI, where he developed the industry standard for judging the dollar value of social media actions and endorsements. He has now founded Credtent.org to empower content creators to be paid when their content is used for AI training while also helping ensure that AI tools limit their training to credible content.

Associate Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Professor, Syracuse University

Lois is a leader for both the Rhetoric Society of America and the American Society for the History of Rhetoric, serves as Associate Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at Syracuse, and is author of several highly regarded books in rhetoric, including recently a volume on persuasion and ethics.

Director, Program in Writing and Rhetoric, Stony Brook University

Peter is an expert in the fields of assessment and transfer, and he has published across top journals in the fields of rhetoric and composition.

Professor, Department of Linguistics, Stony Brook University

Owen’s research focuses on natural language processing and computational linguistics. He has worked at AT&T Labs — Research, 15 years at Columbia University as a research scientist, and three years at Elemental Cognition LLC, a startup aiming to develop software for deep language understanding. He has served as the Chair of the American chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics.

Professor, Program in Writing and Rhetoric, Stony Brook University

Former Director of Stony Brook’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric, Roger is winner of the highest research award and recipient of the largest research grant in composition and rhetoric. He is the organizer of this summit.

Professor, Mount Saint Mary’s University

An environmental humanities scholar, Scott investigates the interaction of the human and nonhuman in story-telling and myth.

Professor and a founder of the Digital Trace Data Lab at North Dakota State University

Zoltan’s research uses computational approaches to study communication contexts where complex information -- like climate change or medical mis/information -- circulates through rhetorical systems. He has built AI-based computational pipelines for classifying complex rhetorical constructs for multiple Federal grants, and he serves as the co-guest editor of a forthcoming special issue on Rhetoric and AI from Rhetoric Society Quarterly.

Director of the Equity Lab and the Duane A. and Virginia S. Dittman Professor of English & American Studies at William and Mary University

Liz’s research focuses on how digital media and mobile technologies are transforming traditional institutions and public memory. She is co-chair of the MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI.