SPEAKER: Rosemarie Santa Gonzalez, Research Scientist, H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering and NSF AI Institute for Collaborative Assistance and Responsive Interaction for Networked Groups (AI-CARING) at Georgia Tech
ABSTRACT: AI is increasingly deployed in high stakes environments that shape access to essential resources such as food, logistics, or healthcare. Yet, many AI efforts struggle in long term deployment, not because of technical limitations, but because challenges related to people, communities, and real world contexts in which they operate. This talk presents a people first, socio technical approach to designing and deploying AI systems with humans in the loop. By integrating community engaged research with optimization and agent based modeling, the work demonstrates how participatory design reshapes data practices, modeling assumptions, and evaluation criteria. Drawing on deployments in food access planning, decentralized cold chain logistics, and AI technologies designed with seniors, the talk highlights how real world constraints and community knowledge surface critical design and deployment considerations often invisible in lab based workflows. The talk concludes with open research directions for building people centered AI infrastructures through interdisciplinary collaboration, translation to impact, and long-term stewardship.
BIO: Rosemarie Santa González, Ph.D. is a Georgia T ech Research Faculty working at the intersection of AI, optimization, and people centered system design. Her research focuses on ethical, deployable AI enabled decision support tools for high stakes domains such as food access, logistics, healthcare, and aging services, using community-engaged methods to translate research into real-world impact.
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IPaT: GVU Lunch Lecture Series
The IPaT: GVU Lunch Lecture Series is free and features guest speakers presenting on topics related to people-centered technologies and their impact on society. Lunch is provided at 12:00 p.m. (while supplies last) and the talks begin at 12:30 p.m. Join us weekly or watch video replays. Most lectures are held in the Centergy One building in Technology Square.
https://research.gatech.edu/ipat/lunch-lectures