The College of Professional and Global Education (CPGE)’s 2024 Online Student Conference is held during February 20-22, 2024. The Conference seeks to connect students across the college and promote student work and aims to provide an opportunity for CPGE students to share their school or professional work, help students communicate and connect with each other, and ultimately foster a stronger sense of community among students.
View Student Presentations on Conference Website
All student presentations are pre-recorded video presentations housed on the conference website.
Live Opening & Closing Session
Opening Session: February 20, 2024, 12:00-1:00 pm (Pacific)
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Bharat Mehra
Professor & EBSCO Endowed Chair in Social Justice
School of Library and Information Studies
University of Alabama
https://bmehra.people.ua.edu/
Title: Social Justice and Action Research to Extend the Field of Information: Dismantling White Entrenched Systemic Hegemonies
Description: Dr. Bharat Mehra will discuss social justice and action research intersections across his recent work in the field of information (including library and information science) to generate community-wide positive impacts. In the process he provides a critical positionality to his “voice” toward strategic actions that can dismantle white entrenched systemic hegemonies in research, teaching, service, and practice.
Biography: Dr. Mehra is EBSCO Endowed Chair in Social Justice and Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama. His research focuses on diversity and social justice in library and information science (LIS) and community informatics or use of information and communication technologies to empower minority and underserved populations to make meaningful changes in their everyday lives. Dr. Mehra primarily teaches courses on social justice and inclusion advocacy, diversity and inclusive leadership in information organizations, community-engaged scholarship, outreach to diverse populations, public library management, collection management, and grant development for information professionals.
Closing Session: February 22, 2024, 12:00-1:00 pm (Pacific)
Keynote Speaker: Krishna Gadiraju, MSEE
Doctoral Candidate
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Louisiana State University
Title: Advanced AI Applications in Healthcare
Description: In the dynamic realm where Artificial Intelligence (AI) intersects with healthcare, a profound transformation unfolds, unveiling unparalleled possibilities and advancements. The fusion of advanced AI technologies with healthcare practices holds the promise to not only reshape the landscape of medical research, diagnosis, treatment, and patient care but also to set new standards for enhanced healthcare outcomes. This talk delves into the need for integrating Advanced AI applications in healthcare, recognizing the escalating complexity and challenges faced by the industry. It introduces a proactive solution rooted in graph theory to identify infectious hotspots in urban healthcare environments, constructing a patient-specific graph that adeptly captures intricate inter-dependencies and health dynamics for effective outbreak management. The subsequent discussion seamlessly aligns with the critical demand for advanced AI in healthcare, focusing on optimizing Large Language Models (LLMs). By employing graph theory and clique-finding methods to craft a prompt-specific graph, this approach aims to refine the capabilities of LLMs, enhancing their understanding of context, semantics, and domain-specific intricacies. This initiative directly contributes to the augmentation of AI tools tailored for healthcare applications. Together, these initiatives underscore the transformative potential of Advanced AI applications in healthcare. The integration of diverse patient data and the optimization of LLMs represent a strategic response to the multifaceted challenges faced by the healthcare industry. This talk endeavors to showcase these pioneering initiatives, emphasizing a unified approach that provides a tangible blueprint for the seamless integration of cutting-edge AI tools into healthcare practices.
Biography: Gadiraju received his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering (B. Tech EEE) from JNTU Kakinada in May 2013. He then received his Post Graduate Diploma Degree from NPTI-PSTI-Bangalore, and worked as a Jr. Electrical Engineer in Elpro International Ltd. in Pune, India. He then joined Louisiana State University to pursue his master’s degree in Electrical Engineering in the spring semester of 2016. He received his degree of Master of Science in Electrical Engineering (MSEE) in Fall 2018. He is currently a doctoral candidate in electrical and computer engineering.