Recognizing the future of artificial intelligence
Research opportunities and donor-funded scholarships are enabling Eli Laird ’21, ’23, ’27 to expand our knowledge of artificial intelligence, particularly how it is used for facial recognition. The Ph.D. candidate hopes to use his experience and skills to improve the analysis of medical images, pharmaceutical drug discovery and biometrics – the study of unique human characteristics like DNA, fingerprints or retinal patterns.
“SMU scholarships have played a very important part in my academic journey,” said Laird. “The support from the University has allowed me to concentrate on my passion for research without financial stress.”
As an SMU undergraduate student, Laird received the Second Century Opportunity and Discovery scholarships. He worked as a teaching assistant in computer science classrooms on campus and in the SMU Abroad program in Germany, and as an SMU Guildhall research assistant.
Laird’s work in artificial intelligence stems from longtime interests in human biology, neuroscience and psychology. A biometric research internship in Washington, D.C., with the technology firm SAIC led to a full-time position as a data scientist. Two years later, Laird returned to SMU to pursue his passions for innovation and research in graduate school.
Working in the SMU Intelligent Systems and Bias Examination Lab (ISaBEL), Laird and a team of data scientists and researchers use the University’s supercomputing system to examine facial recognition algorithms and their connections to ongoing advancements in artificial intelligence. The research group is led by Corey Clark, assistant professor of computer science in the Lyle School of Engineering and deputy director for research at SMU Guildhall.
“Choosing SMU for both my master’s and Ph.D. was mainly driven by the opportunity to work on AI research with Dr. Clark,” said Laird. “We’ve been working on a lot of exciting research projects on bias in AI, as well as explainable AI – an artificial intelligence model that centralizes human understanding and intellectual control over the process – that can be directly applied in the real world.”
Launched in 2022 by the SMU AT&T Center for Virtualization, ISaBEL brings together the foremost commercial developers of artificial intelligence systems with the leading scientists, faculty and students at SMU. The lab seeks to understand and mitigate bias in AI systems using the latest research, standards and peer-reviewed scientific studies.
“SMU gives undergraduate and graduate students a lot of freedom to pursue the research topics we’re interested in. This drives greater innovation and student excitement,” said Laird. “As I begin my career, I realize the skills I’ve learned here are highly applicable to my industry and future research.”