About the Talk:

Join leaders from OpenAI for Science and researchers from across academia for an accessible, interdisciplinary look at how AI is reshaping and speeding up modern research. In late October we hosted an in-person Higher Education Faculty Guild event, where Kevin Weil (VP, OpenAI for Science) described AI as a new kind of scientific tool that is compressing decades of research into years. We're excited to bring these presentations to everyone!

This session shows diverse ways that academic researchers are using AI, including:

• Using AI to trace the emotional patterns in literature and explore cultural archives.

• Neuroscience exploration using AI to rebuild brain circuits and study how memories form.

• Digital art-history research examining how computer vision models “see” and represent the visual world.

Tune in to see concrete examples and demos showing how AI can speed up time-consuming tasks like text analysis and image restoration, reveal connections across disciplines, and help researchers question model behavior, bias, and ethics. This session is designed for scientists, educators, and cultural researchers who want practical, real-world ways to bring AI into their work and classrooms.

About the Speakers:

Kevin Weil, VP, OpenAI for Science @ OpenAI

Kevin Weil is the VP, OpenAI for Science, previously Chief Product Officer at OpenAI, where he leads the development and application of cutting-edge AI research into products and services that empower consumers, developers, and businesses. With a wealth of experience in scaling technology products, Kevin brings a deep understanding of both consumer and enterprise needs in the AI space. Prior to joining OpenAI, he was the Head of Product at Instagram, leading consumer and monetization efforts that contributed to the platform's global expansion and success. Kevin's experience also includes a pivotal role at Twitter, where he served as Senior Vice President of Product. He played a key part in shaping the platform’s core consumer experience and advertising products, while also overseeing development for Vine and Periscope. During his tenure at Twitter, he led the creation of the company’s advertising platform and the development of Fabric, a mobile development suite. Kevin holds a B.A. in Mathematics and Physics from Harvard University, graduating summa cum laude, and an M.S. in Physics from Stanford University. He is also a dedicated advocate for environmental conservation, serving on the board of The Nature Conservancy.

Katherine Elkins, Professor of Humanities and Comparative Literature @ Kenyon College

Katherine Elkins is a Professor of Humanities and Comparative Literature at Kenyon College who has spent the last decade proving that AI can transform research in the humanities and social sciences. Her work demonstrates how AI enables new forms of discovery, from analyzing the emotional architecture of hundreds of stories to modeling social networks in historical letters and films. Elkins' book The Shapes of Stories (Cambridge University Press, 2022) established methods now used globally to quantify what we've long theorized about how stories work. Most recently, her research has explored questions surrounding AI and literary translation, the AI-Fiction training paradox, and AI for modeling the shapes of fairy tales.

As Principal Investigator for the US AI Safety Institute representing the Modern Language Association, Elkins brings humanities expertise to national AI policy while pioneering research methodologies that answer fundamental questions in our fields: What makes a story compelling? How do political narratives persuade? How do cultural meanings evolve over time? More importantly, AI democratizes cutting-edge research. Through Kenyon's AI Lab, undergraduates conduct original research that has been downloaded 85,000+ times from over 1,000 institutions worldwide. Students leverage AI to analyze everything from congressional AI legislation to emotion in Playboy covers, producing new knowledge that advances our disciplines.

Her international collaborations include developing AI methods alongside researchers with Colombia's Truth and Reconciliation Archive and contributing to UNESCO's AI and culture policy framework. Elkins will demonstrate how AI can act as a genuine research accelerator, enabling faculty and students to test longstanding theories in our fields and to answer questions that matter.

Leonardo Impett, Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities @ University of Cambridge

Leonardo Impett is Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Cambridge, Bye-Fellow of Selwyn College, and Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Art History (Bibliotheca Hertziana), a German research institute in Rome, Italy. His research focuses on crossing AI approaches to art history with art-historical approaches to AI - and especially in how knowledge can go both ways. At Cambridge, he has recently been responsible for setting up and directing the new MPhil and PhD programs in Digital Humanities, which sit under the Faculty of English. He is occasionally asked to write about himself in the third person.

Leonardo has a background in information engineering and machine learning, having worked or studied at the Cambridge Machine Learning Lab, the Cambridge Computer Lab’s Rainbow Group, and Microsoft Research. He was previously Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Durham University, in the AI and Human Systems group. His PhD (EPFL) focused on the use of computer vision for the ‘distant reading’ of the history of art. He has previously been a fellow of Villa I Tatti – the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, and a visiting professor at the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) on the theme of “Artificial Intelligence and Digital Humanities.”

His new research group at the Max Planck Institute, “Machine Visual Culture,” investigates the reciprocal relationship between artificial intelligence and visual culture, focusing on how AI systems both shape and are shaped by histories of seeing. Combining digital art history with critical AI studies, the group explores AI not only as a technology but also as a cultural phenomenon with important implications for the humanities. Spanning the Max Planck and Cambridge, Leonardo’s distributed ‘lab’ includes over ten full-time PhDs and postdocs.

Leonardo’s new book (with Fabian Offert, UCSB) on the history of the philosophy underneath AI systems, Vector Media, is forthcoming with the University of Minnesota Press. He has been a PI in projects on AI, copyright, and political cartoons (Australian Research Council); studying the visual culture of computer vision datasets (Volkswagen Foundation); and user interaction with AI in online exhibitions (UKRI). Alongside his research in digital art history, he frequently works with machine learning in arts and culture, including with the Royal Opera House, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Liverpool Biennial, where he developed the Biennial’s first AI-curated show in 2021, based on OpenAI’s CLIP and GPT models.