Michigan AI

10/07/2026

Cheers to our recent PhD graduates who are beginning exciting new academic positions! 🎉

We’re proud to celebrate this milestone and look forward to seeing the impact of their research & teaching leadership in the years ahead. Wishing them all the best!

Xinyue Chen (PhD 2026) will join the School of Artificial Intelligence at Shanghai Jiao Tong University as an assistant professor in January 2027. Chen’s dissertation at U-M was titled “Designing Human-AI Systems to Mediate Collaborative Work,” and she was advised by Professor Xu Wang.

Sarah Jabbour (PhD 2026) is an assistant professor of applied AI and Fishman Faculty Fellow at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Jabbour’s dissertation at U-M was titled “Towards AI-Augmented Clinical Decision Making,” and she was advised by Professors Jenna Wiens and David Fouhey.

Shane Storks (PhD 2024) started as an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Eastern Michigan University this fall. Storks’s dissertation at U-M was titled “Coherent Physical Commonsense Reasoning in Foundational Language Models,” and he was advised by Professor Anhong Guo.

https://cse.engin.umich.edu/stories/recent-cse-phd-alums-begin-faculty-careers

10/07/2026

At COLM 2026, don't miss these presentations from SLED AI LAB:

🧩 Einstein Puzzles: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.25595
The authors study whether language models can do systematic relational reasoning through Einstein-style logic puzzles, and whether environment-based verification can help with the reasoning process.

📍 Poster Session 4
Wednesday, Oct. 7, 4:30 PM PDT - Imperial Ballroom · Poster #19

🌱 SimLife: https://roihn.github.io/SimLife/
The authors introduce a long-horizon situated benchmark to study whether multimodal models can learn and reason about evolving behavioral patterns from weeks or even months of observation.

🎤 Oral at the Learning from Situated and Embodied Interaction (LSEI) Workshop
Friday, Oct. 9, 2:22 PM - Union Square 15 / 16 · Fourth Floor
📍 Poster: Friday, Oct. 9, 5:00 PM

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10/06/2026

☀️ Our Newsletter is here!
It was a busy & exciting summer for our community! From new research and publications to awards, collaborations, and other accomplishments, our faculty and students made the most of the summer months.
Check it out:
https://tinyurl.com/mw3zh45n

10/05/2026

Last day to register for the Causal AI for Decision Making Workshop!
This workshop organized by Profs. Maggie Makar and Walter Dempsey brings together researchers across disciplines to explore causal inference & for healthcare, public policy, digital health & beyond.

Keynote speakers:

Elias Bareinboim (Columbia Univ.) and Nathan Kallus (Cornell Tech)
Check out the schedule and register by OCTOBER 5:
https://ai.engin.umich.edu/events/causal-ai-for-decision-making-workshop/

10/05/2026

10/02/2026

Cheers to our recent PhD graduates who are beginning exciting new academic positions! 🎉

We’re proud to celebrate this milestone and look forward to seeing the impact of their research & teaching leadership in the years ahead. Wishing them all the best!

Xinyue Chen (PhD 2026) will join the School of Artificial Intelligence at Shanghai Jiao Tong University as an assistant professor in January 2027. Chen’s dissertation at U-M was titled “Designing Human-AI Systems to Mediate Collaborative Work,” and she was advised by Professor Xu Wang.

Sarah Jabbour (PhD 2026) is an assistant professor of applied AI and Fishman Faculty Fellow at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Jabbour’s dissertation at U-M was titled “Towards AI-Augmented Clinical Decision Making,” and she was advised by Professors Jenna Wiens and David Fouhey.

Shane Storks (PhD 2024) started as an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Eastern Michigan University this fall. Storks’s dissertation at U-M was titled “Coherent Physical Commonsense Reasoning in Foundational Language Models,” and he was advised by Professor Joyce Chai.

10/02/2026

How can causal methods help build more reliable ?

This workshop organized by Profs. Maggie Makar and Walter Dempsey brings together researchers across disciplines to explore causal inference & for healthcare, public policy, digital health & beyond.

Keynote speakers:
Elias Bareinboim (Columbia Univ.) and Nathan Kallus (Cornell Tech)

Register by OCTOBER 5:

https://ai.engin.umich.edu/events/causal-ai-for-decision-making-workshop/

10/01/2026

How does lie or “go rogue”?

Prof. Lu Wang joined WWJ On-Demand’s Chris Fillar on 9/26 for a podcast on how AI models can exhibit unexpected behaviors, what it means for a model to act independently, and how researchers can make AI systems safer and more reliable.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-does-ai-lie/id1838763990?i=100079177861

Podcast Episode · WWJ: On-Demand · September 26 · 6m

09/30/2026

What does a handwritten "7" have to do with discovering new drugs? ✍️💊

PhD candidate Michael Ito explains how graph neural networks, symmetry & are helping accelerate drug discovery.

Written by Eleanor Lin:
https://ai.engin.umich.edu/2026/07/21/what-does-a-handwritten-7-have-to-do-with-discovering-new-drugs/