Dr. Richard Halverson
Kellner Family Distinguished Professor of Urban Education, UW-Madison

Dr. Halverson is the Kellner Family Distinguished Professor of Urban Education in the UW-Madison School of Education. His research brings the research methods and practices of the Learning Sciences to the world of educational leadership and interactive media. Rich is a co-director of the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning and leads the Wallace Foundation Equity-Centered Leadership research project. He is a former high school teacher and administrator, and earned an MA in Philosophy and a PhD in the Learning Sciences from Northwestern University. He is co-author (with Allan Collins) of Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America and (with Carolyn Kelley) of Mapping Leadership: The Tasks that Matter for Improving Teaching and Learning in Schools.

Larry Zhiming Xu, Ph.D.
Marquette University

Dr. Xu is an assistant professor of strategic communication and an assistant professor of information systems and analytics at Marquette University, where he founded the Ai4Ai Lounge (Artificial Intelligence for Analytics and Insights). An affiliated faculty at the Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute (NMDSI), he has co-chaired its Research and Talent Subcommittees, helping lead collaborative initiatives that connect academia, industry and the broader community. His research applies experimental and computational methods to understand how emerging technologies shape human communication, judgment and social relationships in organizational and educational settings. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California.

Dr. Gabriel Velez
Marquette University

Dr. Velez is an associate professor in Educational Policy and Leadership in the College of Education with a courtesy appointment in Psychology at Marquette University. He is also the Editor of Qualitative Psychology and, at Marquette, serves as the Faculty Director of the Black and Latino/a Ecosystem and Support Transition (BLEST) Hub and the Chair of the Faculty Research Team for the Center for Peacemaking. Dr. Velez studies identity development in adolescents, particularly in relation to citizenship, human rights, restorative justice, artificial intelligence and peace. Dr. Velez has authored, Making Meaning of Justice and Peace: A Developmental Lens to Restorative Justice and Peace Education, and has another manuscript under contract on adolescent development, education, and artificial intelligence, both with Cambridge University Press. He received a BA in History and Literature from Harvard University, and an MA and PhD from the University of Chicago in Comparative Human Development.