Computing Research Association

Meet the faces advocating for and shaping the future of AI education! 🤖

Continuing our series highlighting our newly announced NSF NAIRR AI Education Fellows, this week we’re celebrating Ananya Jana! 🌟

Ananya Jana, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Marshall University, West Virginia. Her research lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence and computer vision, with a primary focus on medical imaging. She develops deep learning methods for disease assessment. Through the NAIRR AI Education Fellowship, Jana seeks to expand equitable access to AI research infrastructure and design hands-on, research-driven learning experiences that empower students to build, evaluate, and deploy responsible AI systems.

We’re inspired by her passion to make AI accessible to all!

Meet the faces advocating for and shaping the future of AI education! 🤖

Continuing our series highlighting our newly announced NSF NAIRR AI Education Fellows, this week we’re celebrating Stephen Hutt! 🌟

Stephen Hutt is an Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota and co-director of the Learning Informatics Lab. His research sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, the learning sciences, and human-centered design, focusing on how students engage with complex learning environments, how self-regulated learning and metacognitive processes unfold over time, and how AI can be designed to support rather than replace these processes.

We’re inspired by his passion to help facilitate human–centered AI practices in academia and industry!

The CISE PhD Admissions Processes Survey is designed to better understand how applications are evaluated in practice, how programs form cohorts, and how structural realities like funding and advising capacity influence decisions.

The findings will help clarify expectations for prospective applicants and provide useful comparative context for departments reflecting on their own processes.
If you’ve participated in CISE PhD admissions within the past five years, we invite you to contribute your perspective.

🕒 ~10 minutes
📊 Reported only in aggregate
👉 Take the survey: https://cerp.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9zZSBbOESmRmN1k
Responses due May 31, 2026.

Read our full interview with Ritesh Kanchi, a 2025 CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researchers Honorable Mention: https://cra.org/crn/2026/05/undergraduate-research-highlight-developing-intelligent-user-interfaces-for-accessibility/