Board of Advisors

AI-Learn’s Board of Advisors (BOA) consists of leading educators, researchers, and practitioners dedicated to democratizing learning. The BOA provides oversight and governance for the AI-Learn Open Source Project.

Teresa Martín-Retortillo Rubio (Chair)

Teresa Martín-Retortillo is the Executive President of IE University Lifelong Learning where she leads innovation in open programs both on-line and face to face and traditional Executive Education. She is also responsible for supporting IE University´s Corporate Partners along a number of dimensions: from talent development to innovations and research. Prior to that, she was senior vice president of Strategy and Business Development for McGraw-Hill Education. She is currently a Non-Executive Director at the Board of a listed Spanish bank. Teresa is also the co-chair of the board of directors of Headspring, the joint venture between IE Business School and Financial Times for custom in-company programs. Before joining McGraw-Hill Education, Teresa was a partner with Bain & Company where she worked for circa 20 years, responsible for advising C-level executives and their boards with the objective of driving company transformations and increasing shareholder value. She worked for clients representing a range of industries including education, helping to develop business strategies and translate plans into tangible results. She has extensive experience supporting private equity clients through deal sourcing, due diligence, and portfolio company transformation on more than 100 deals.

Teresa began her professional career at Goldman Sachs as a corporate finance analyst in London. She holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from CUNEF (Colegio Universitario de Estudios Financieros) in Madrid, and an MBA degree from Harvard Business School.

Charles Dzuiban

Charles Dziuban is Director of the Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness at the University of Central Florida (UCF) where has been a faculty member since 1970 teaching research design and statistics and is the founding director of the university’s Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning. In 2017 Chuck received UCF’s inaugural Collective Excellence award for his work strengthening the university’s impact with the Tangelo Park Program, an educational program serving low income communities in Central Florida. Currently he is working with Patsky Moskal and Tony Picciano on the book Analytics and Adaptive Learning: Research Perspectives that will be released in 2023. In the coming year he will be transitioning to the position of Executive Director of Educational Programs for the Harris Rosen Foundation.

Ani Grubišić

Ani Grubišić is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Science at the University of Split, a faculty member since 2002, teaching Programming in Python, E-learning Systems and Learning Analytics courses. She is a principal investigator of her second Office of Naval Research grant awarded to a research project Enhancing Adaptive Courseware Based on Natural Language Processing. She has memberships in the IEEE Technical Committee on Learning Technology (IEEE TCLT), the IEEE Adaptive Instructional Systems Technical Advisory Group (IEEE AIS TAG), and the IEEE Adaptive Instructional Systems Standards Working Group (IEEE AIS WG). She is also the Editorial Board member of the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (ETHE), Associate Editor of the Journal of Communications Software and Systems, Program Board Member for the International Conference on Adaptive Instructional Systems (AIS/HCI), Chair for the Symposium on Advanced Educational Technologies (part of International Conference SoftCOM), and a reviewer for the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, the Education and Information Technologies, the IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, the Artificial Intelligence Review, and the Computers & Education.

Sunanda Parthsarathy

Sunanda Parthasarathy is Head of Data Science at Dick’s Sporting Goods where she oversees the end-to-end data strategy for the largest U.S. based full-line omni-channel sporting goods retailer. Previously, she led data science teams at CVS, Wayfair and DataXu (acquired by Roku). She has been recognized as one of REWORK’s 30 influential women advancing AI in Boston & with the Massachusets Technology Leadership Council (TLC) Emerging Executive Award for her leadership in the data science comunity. She is an active member in the local start-up, tech and data science community and is the chapter lead of the Women in Big Data Boston Chapter & co-organizer of The Data Scientist meetup group in Boston. She has a PhD in Physics from Purdue University followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University.

Nirmal Patel

Nirmal Patel is Co-Founder and CEO of Smart Paper, a scalable AI-based platform for digitizing educational assessments. Smart Paper is the recipient of the prestigious Learning Engineering Tools Competition (2021) and the Ageis Graham Bell Award for innotion (2022). Patel’s educational data science research has won multiple awards. He actively works with India’s Ministry of Education, where he uses data to address fairness and equity issues in national tests. He has also co-authored award-winning educational games that have been the subect of rigorous learning science research.

Philip Pavlik

Philip Pavlik is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Intelligent Systems at the University of Memphis. At the University of Memphis, Pavlik leads the Optimal Learning Lab, which applies cognitive theory and methods to educational contexts. He and his students have investigated learning in various domains, including mathematics, language learning, statistics, musical learning, and anatomy and physiology. In this work, he develops software and tools for educational applications, such as the Mobile Fact and Concept Training System (MoFaCTS), which serves as a testbed for educational interventions, and the R package logistic knowledge tracing (LKT), which aims to make student modeling more efficient and accurate.

Oleksandra “Sasha” Poquet

Oleksandra, or Sasha, Poquet is Assistant Professor in Learning Analytics at the Department of Educational Sciences, School of Social Sciences and Technology, Technical University of Munich. She is also an adjunct researcher affiliated with the Centre for Change and Complexity in Learning at the University of South Australia. At the TUM, she leads a research group LEAPS that is interested in LEarning Analytics and Practices in Systems. In the past, she has worked as a researcher at the Centre for Research and Interdisciplinarity (University of Paris), Centre for Change and Complexity in Learning (University of South Australia), and Applied Institute of Learning Science and Educational Technology (National University of Singapore). Sasha was a Vice-President of the Executive Committee of the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR), and remains an active member of the learning analytics community.

Demetrios Sampson

Demetrios Sampson is a Professor of Digital Systems for Learning and Education at the Department of Digital Systems, University of Piraeus, Greece where he serves as Academic Staff since 2003. His research expertise is in the fields of Learning Technologies and Digital Learning, demonstrating a significant scientific impact as he is listed among the top 20 researchers globally in the field of Learning Technologies based on Google Scholar citations (February 2023). He is a pioneer of open access movement to research dissemination by serving as Editor-in-Chief of one of the first open-access journals in educational technology, the Educational Technology & Society Journal (2003-2018). He has led various initiatives under IEEE (the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity) in learning technology, including serving as the Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Learning Technologies (2008-2011 and 2015-2018). He is the recipient of the IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Service Award (July 2012) and named a Golden Core Member of IEEE Computer Society in recognition of his contribution to the field of Learning Technologies. He is also the recipient of the Golden Nikola Tesla Chain Award of the International Society for Engineering Pedagogy (IGIP) for “International outstanding achievements in the field of Engineering Pedagogy” (September 2018).