Dr. Kevin Hallinan is currently an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Dayton (UD).
He also is Director of Impact Mining at Synota.io, where he is working on advancing investment in solar micro-grids / coupled with AI facilitated education to enable productive use of energy in unpowered communities in sub-Saharan Africa.
His background is eclectic, despite serving as professor at different levels for 36 years.
In his early career, he did research for NASA which culminated in an experiment that was conducted on the Space Shuttle in 1996. He then led the development of the New Engineer Program at UD which emphasized engineering for social impact.
A core feature of this is the UD ETHOS program which for 20+ years has provided students at UD an opportunity to do real engineering in support of non-profits in Latin and South America, Africa, and Asia. He also was the founding director of the UD Renewable and Clean Energy Program in 2010.
Always interested in testing new approaches to education, he has worked on experimental courses combining art and theater with engineering and in other transdisciplinary learning opportunities.
Moreover, his recent teaching emphasized big data, machine learning, and natural language processing; and when ChatGPT hit the pavement, he was off and running with experiments to test its place in education.
This book is a testament to these experiments.
Since leaving his role as an educator at UD, his focus has been equity in AI. All proceeds from this book will be donated to the AI 4 All movement.