Student Connectedness & Success
Cooperative Learning & Mentorship
Innovation
Creativity, Research & Development
Excellence
Integrity & Accountability
Our Research Foci:
Intelligent Systems
Robotics
Game Design & Development
Undergraduate Reaseach Experiences
PreK-16 Computer Science Education
Cultural Relevance & Ethics
What is Artificial Intelligence?
28 AI Terms You Should Know!
What is LAIA?
LAIA (Lab for Artificial Intelligence and its Applications) is a research lab and a community of practice (CoP) at Uplift, Inc., led by Dr. Leshell Hatley.
Within it, research scientists collaborate to enhance their skills by learning, using, and creating technologies (software and hardware) to improve the community around us.
These technologies focus on applications of Artificial Intelligence and related computing technologies.
Our research foci:
1. Expert Systems/Intelligent Tutoring Systems
2. Intelligent Robotics
3. Game Design & Development
4. Undergraduate Research Experiences
5. PreK-16 Computer Science & Computer Engineering Education
6. Cultural Relevance & Ethics
Our Purpose
*To enhance students’ skills in collaboration, communication (all forms), research, design, and development/implementation;
*To expose students to a rigorous research agenda focused on the theory and practical uses of Artificial Intelligence and related fields;
*To foster and promote development and innovation related to the application of Artificial Intelligence (theory and ethics) to learning technology, games, and robotics and other automated technologies; and
*To provide educational experiences in computer science and engineering and mentorship to PreK-16 students, especially regarding programming, game design, and robotics.
LAIA Activities, Accolades & Accomplishments!
March 2024 Dr. Hatley shares insight on how to engage diverse youth in Computer Science (with equity, diversity, inclusion, and justice in mind) with the Faculty in the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University in Canada.
March 2024 Dr. Hatley participates in the National Girls Collaborative Project's "Women Who Tell Are STEM Stories" webinar.
February 2024 Dr. Hatley spoke with elementary students about AI & Robotics as a STEM SuperStar with Project Scientist!
November 2023 Dr. Hatley serves as reviewer for IEEE's Black Issues in Computing Education (BICE) Symposium.
November 2023 Dr. Hatley reviews report on STEM Women Entrepreneurs for the National Women's Business Council and the Small Business Administration (SBA).
October 2023 Dr. Hatley renews mentorshop of computer science PhD students with the Institute for African American Mentoring in Computing Sciences (iAAMCS, pronounced ‘I am CS’).
September 2023 Dr. Hatley participates in The State of Girls in STEM (action planning) discussion hosted by National Girls Collaborative Project.
September 2023 Dr. Hatley attends Department of Education: IES Games Expo, Innovation Day, and Office Hours with partners. #BOOST
May 2023 Dr. Hatley served as Keynote Speaker for Girl Scouts Court of Awards (and Bridging) Ceremony in Washington, DC.
March 2023 Due to a scheduling conflict, Dr. Hatley is no longer able to serve as Deputy Co-Chair of Tapia 2023. Much success to the Team.
February 2023 Dr. Hatley shares her learning and career journey in STEM at the USPTO Black Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program at Morgan State University.
February 2023 Work it Out Wombats premiers on PBSKids!
January 2023 Dr. Hatley attends Governor Wes Moore's historic inaugural 'The People Ball' in Baltimore, MD. Governor Moore is the 1st Black Governor of Maryland and the 3rd Black Governor in the United States.
November 2022Dr. Hatley becomes Deputy Program Chair of the 2023 CMD-IT/ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing.
October 2022Dr. Hatley goes to Jamaica.
September 2022Dr. Hatley helps to launch and lead the Eva B. Dykes Writers Collective.
August 2022Dr. Hatley becomes General Program Co-Chair for RESPECT 2023! RESPECT (Research in Equity and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology) is the premier venue for research on equity, inclusion and justice in computing and computing education.
July 2022With Research Team, Dr. Hatley publishes Unwritten Magic: Participatory Design of AI Dialogue to Empower Marginalized Voices" for ACM International Conference on Information Technology for Social Good.
June 2022Dr. Hatley goes to Accra, Ghana.
June 2022Dr. Hatley shares lessons learned from 25 years as a STEM Educator at the Black Girls Rock & Amazon Tech Summit.
March 2022 Dr. Hatley become (online) speaker for Games for Change - Summer 2022. February 2022 Dr. Hatley becomes Chair of the Doctoral Consortium for Tapia 2022. February 2022 Dr. Hatley partners with GBH Kids and EDC in engaging caregivers and librarians in teaching computational thinking (CT) skills to preschoolers in rural communities (Work It Out Wombats ).
November 2021 Dr. Hatley becomes a member of the MIT RAISE (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education) Advisory Board.
October 2021 Dr. Hatley was recognized as one of the 50 Women in Robotics You Should Know in 2021 by RoboHub in celebration of Ada Lovelace Day.
July 2021 LAIA moves to Uplift, Inc. New website coming soon.
April 2021 Dr. Hatley participated in the "ACM AI | You Belong in AI! Podcast S2E3
April 2021 CMU, UPitt Research Collaborators and Dr. Hatley get paper published in proceedings for The 2021 Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education - Artificial Intelligence in Education Mind the Gap: AI for Equity and Inclusion. Paper Title = Explaining Engagement: Underrepresented Learner Behaviors in a Virtual Coding Camp
April 2021 Dr. Hatley participated in the video podcast “The Power of Gaming” on Learning Unwrapped.
March 2021: Dr. Hatley serves as panelist for Maryland Public Television's Indie Lens Pop Up screening of Coded Bias.
March 2021: Oluwatobi Olutimehin is sharing his approach to building a chatbot for the LAIA website on March 2, 2021 at 4pm.
November 2020: Dr. Hatley is recognized as a REALList Engineer by technical.ly and is named 1 of 20 of the Most Influential Technologists in Baltimore in 2020.
October 2020: Dr. Hatley wins Google Award for Inclusion Research - "Developing a Dialogue System for a Culturally-Responsive Social Programmable Robot" with Dr. Erin Walker (University of Pittsburgh).
October 2020: Dr. Hatley wins a Google ExploreCSR Award (CSR = Computer Science Research) - "Providing a View Inside Computer Science Research: A One-Year Exploratory Experience." Students from Coppin State University, Baltimore City Community College, and Howard University are expected to participate!
October 2020: Data analysis begins for LAIA's research project on web-based math learning games for elementary school children.
September 2020: Dr. Hatley is the PI with Dr. Sahu as Co-PI for a $300K Capacity Building Grant from the National Security Agency for Cybersecurity Education Diversity Initiative (CEDI) . This grant provides resources towards the creation of a new degree program for students in the Mathematics and Computer Science Department.
August 2020: Undergraduate Research Team completes game ratings and the official project page for LAIA's web-based math learning games for elementary school children.
June 2020: LAIA & Dr. Hatley partnered with Arizona State University, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of Pittsburgh on the Collaborative Research: A Social Programmable Robot: Fostering Rapport to Improve Computer Science Skills and Attitudes Project.
April 2020: Dr. Hatley is approved for promotion to Associate Professor with Tenure.
March 2020: Ratings begin for the Math Games Research Project. Official project website design and construction begin.
March 2020: LAIA (Coppin State) wins NSF HBCU-UP Grant for Broadening Participation in STEM with Howard University (lead institution), Winston Salem State University, Morehouse College, and University of Michigan. I aM BPRC
February 2020: Math Games Undergraduate Research Team begins literature review regarding design considerations for math learning games.
February 2020: LAIA changes the name of the KEEPCLEAN app project to BMoreCLEAN.
January 2020: LAIA selects Undergraduate Research Team to begin research on web-based math learning games for elementary school children.
December 2019: Dr. Hatley represents Coppin State University on the Mid-Atlantic Space Grant Data Science Consortium and begins the process of joining the National Space Grant Foundation.
December 2019: Dr. Hatley hosts Mr. Moore and his junior computer science class from Carver HS again to finish their Scratch games.
November 2019: Dr. Hatley hosts Mr. Moore and his junior computer science class from Carver HS. They are introduced to Scratch.
November 2019: Dr. Hatley is invited to and participates in QEM NSF (DRL) Proposal Writing Workshop.
October 2019: LAIA formed 2019-2020 robotics education partnership with Coppin Academy High School.
September 2019: Dr. Hatley served as proposal reviewer for the Smithsonian Youth Access Grant.
August 2019: Dr. Hatley is invited to and participates in NSF Workshop to discuss Including Fairness, Equity, Accountability, and Transparency in computing-based (e.g. Artificial Intelligence) research, practice, and educational efforts at Georgia Tech.
June 2019: Dr. McCoy is CoPI and is awarded NSF ITEST-Advancing Informal STEM Learning program Award: Maryland Sports Data Analytics Camps for Youth in partnership with the University of Maryland, College Park.
June 2019: Dr. Hatley is invited to and participates in NSF Workshop to discuss Including Ethics in Data Science Pedagogy - EDSP-2019
June 2019: Dr. Hatley is invited to and begins NSF Collaborative Research: Exploring the Intersectional Relationship between Mathematics and Computing Identities for Black Girls and Women.
May 2019: Dr. Hatley is invited to participate in Morgan State University: Mobile Summer Institute on Scientific Teaching as part of the ASPIRE partnership between Johns Hopkins, Morgan State, and Coppin State.
April 2019: LAIA's #KeepClean project gets a new website!"
April 2019: LAIA Celebrates 3 Year Anniversary!
March 2019: LAIA launches software development and research project = codename "MoodRing."
December 2018: LAIA, ACM, ACMW sponsor Coppin's 'Hour of Code' Event
October 2018: LAIA began its Intelligent Website Chatbot project.
October 2018: Mercedes Williams took over @coppincs (instagram channel) to share experiences from the #HelloResearch Conference.
October 2018: LAIA Undergraduate Rearch Student Mercedes Williams attends #HelloResearch! A Research Conference for Undergraduate Women in Computer Science, and presents a poster on KeepClean!
October 2018: Dr. Hatley is recognized at the 1st Annual USM "Made in Maryland" celebration for her creation of the Myles & Ayesha Black Inventors Match Game
October 2018: Dr. Hatley participates on the panel entitled Engaging HBCU Faculty on Project-Based Learning in Silicon Valley" based on experiences in the Google Faculty-in-Residence program at the 34th Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Eastern Regional Conference.
September 2018: Students begin project for 2018-2019 HBCU Maker & Innovation Challenge.
August 2018: Dr. Hatley is awarded a $5K grant from the Abell Foundation to continue design and development of the Keep Clean app.
July 2018: LAIA hosts pilot summer programming camp for elementary school students.
June 2018: LAIA Students presents Keep Clean to Baltimore City officials and others working on litter challenge.
June 2018: Dr. Hatley and LAIA students join planning committee for Girls in CS Summit hosted by Code in the Schools.
May 2018: LAIA students make the ACM-W Chapter at CSU an official campus organization.
February 2018: LAIA Students competes in the 2018 HBCU Maker & Innovation Challenge with Keep Clean.
January 2018: LAIA Students app/web design project "oscar" becomes Keep Clean.
November 2017: LAIA Students being new app design project - codename = oscar.
November 2017: Dr. Hatley is awarded $15K from The Kapor Center.
November 2017: LAIA-sponsored, CSU Hacks students begin web-based software project: codename = oscar.
November 2017: With guidance from with LAIA, Coppin CS students apply for Google Internship for the very first time.
October 2017:LAIA launches http://www.coppincs.com.
October 2017:LAIA partners with Career Services to offer Resume Writing Workshop.
September 2017:LAIA launches Coppin CS Slack Community.
August 2017: Dr. Hatley continues work on campus as Google Faculty-in-Residence.
July 2017: Dr. Hatley attends Microsoft Faculty Summit on Artificial Intelligence
June-July 2017: Dr. Hatley becomes Google Faculty-in-Residence.
April 2017: Microsoft invites Dr. Hatley to attend the Faculty Summit on Artificial Intelligence
March 2017: Dr. Hatley gets accepted to in Google's Inaugural Summer 6-week Faculty-in-Residence Program
March 2017: LAIA Research Scientists (students) complete deployment of Rack One of donated Yahoo! servers
January 2017: Dr. Hatley speaks at Frostburg State University on Gamification
November 2016: Yahoo! donates 200 servers to LAIA and the Math and Computer Science Department.
September 2016: Dr. Hatley speaks at University of Maryland: College Park on Gamification
June 2016: LAIA wins 1st place the White House HBCU Maker & Innovation Challenge! April 2016: LAIA is born!
February 2016: Dr. Hatley joins Higher Education Video Game Alliance (HEVGA)
February 2016: Dr. Hatley joins Coppin State Faculty