Monday
Ashish Agarwal – University of Texas at Austin
Driving Assistance Systems Can Lead to More Hazardous Driving
Ashish Agarwal is a professor of information, risk, and operations management at The University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business. He teaches courses on the introduction to information technology honors, digital technologies, and business innovations, and he has supervised numerous doctoral students.
Tuesday
Ann Perreau – Augustana College
Hyperacusis
Dr. Ann E. Perreau is a professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Augustana College (Ill.) and an audiologist in the College’s Roseman Center for Speech, Language, and Hearing. In 2023, she was awarded a grant from the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders for her three-year project to research remote counseling and sound therapy for individuals with hyperacusis. In 2025, Dr. Perreau was elected to a three-year term as President-Elect for the Illinois Academy of Audiology.
Wednesday
Cal Whyte – Florida Institute of Technology
Exoplanets
Caldon T. Whyte is a PhD student in the Department of Aerospace, Physics and Space Science at Florida Institute of Technology (Florida Tech) with a research focus on space exploration and serves as an Ortega Observatory Assistant. After graduating from Florida Tech with a bachelor’s degree in astrobiology in 2023, Whyte has pursued his interest in studying white dwarf stars—the cooling remnants of low-mass stars that have exhausted their nuclear fuel source—and the likelihood of life surviving in their orbits. Whyte’s findings can help scientists make real-world decisions about future space exploration. When embarking on a search for star systems that could sustain photosynthesis, for example, astronomers can now know that white dwarfs create a potentially viable environment for some planets, thanks to Whyte’s research.
Thursday
Rebecca Ratner – University of Maryland
Want a Review You Can Trust? Ask Someone Who Did It Alone
Rebecca Ratner received a Ph.D. in social psychology from Princeton University and has been a visiting scholar in the marketing departments of the Harvard Business School, Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business, and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research explores factors underlying suboptimal consumer decision-making and focuses on memory, variety seeking, and the influence of social norms. Her research has appeared in marketing, psychology, and decision-making journals, including the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Psychology, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Her research has been featured in the media, including The New York Times, Washington Post, CBS News: This Morning, and NPR’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.
Friday
Xiaoming Zhai – University of Georgia
Can AI Think Like a Teacher?
Xiaoming Zhai, Associate Professor in Science Education, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science (courtesy), and Statistics (courtesy), serves the Directors of the AI4STEM Education Center and the National Center on Generative AI for Uplifting STEM+C Education (National GENIUS Center) at the University of Georgia. He was a Humboldt Fellow and Visiting Professor at Leibniz Institute of Science and Mathematics Education. He serves as Founding Co-Chair of the National Association of Research in Science Teaching (NARST)’s Research Interest Group RAISE (Research in AI-involved Science Education) and the Co-Chair of the committee of Advancing AI in Science Education (AASE, NSF-Funded). He recently co-edited the Oxford University Press book, Uses of AI in STEM Education.
