Shamya Karumbaiah
Pronouns: she/her
Journalists: Please use these pronouns when appropriate.
Expert on AI in education, emphasizing responsible, safe, and ethical use of AI in classrooms and AI literacy for educators
Assistant Professor, Educational Psychology School of Education Work: 413-406-8068 — Home and cell phones available upon request shamya.karumbaiah@wisc.edu Home page
Topics
- We can imagine new possibilities in education with AI such as for multilingual and multicultural classrooms, when done with care and caution
- Ethical concerns with AI such as privacy threats, toxicity, biases, and inaccuracies need to be addressed the best we can and made transparent to users
- Bring what we know is effective for learning from education research and theory -- collaboration, active engagement, problem solving, learner agency
- Leveraging contextual differences and learner variabilities is what makes learning engaging and effective -- don't let AI homogenize learning experience
- We cannot replace teachers with AI -- teachers mediate students' learning with AI and we could augment their practices with AI
Achievements
- Postdoctoral Fellow (Computer Science), Carnegie Mellon University, 2022 PhD with distinction (Learning Sciences), University of Pennsylvania, 2021 M.S. (Computer Science), University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2017
- Best research paper nominations in six leading conferences in AI and education, including two in 2025
- Early Career Researcher Award. Society of Learning Analytics Research in 2024
- Leading funded research projects as PI through Spencer Foundation, American Family Insurance, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, etc
- Selected as Rising Stars in EECS by Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2021