Photo of myself wearing a mask

Mark J. Nelson

Assistant Professor & Undergraduate Director
Department of Computer Science
American University

I'm a professor in the computer science department at American University, with a research focus on artificial intelligence (AI).

My main area is AI & games. This includes technical research on game playing as a paradigmatic example of sequential decision-making; design-support work using AI for automated and semi-automated design; and conceptual work on formal models of games' mechanical and meaning-making elements.

Recently I've been looking into how to harness the strengths of large language models (LLMs) while constraining their tendency towards generating hallucinated and otherwise undesired outputs. My strategy (with many collaborators) has been to use the LLM as one component of a larger AI system.

I also try to keep up with (and teach, and occasionally publish) across computer science. Besides AI, I'm particularly interested in symbolic logic, programming languages, theory of computation, computer art, computer music, and computer-assisted design.

Background: I did my B.S. in Computer Science at Harvey Mudd College, where I was influenced onto my current research path by Belinda Thom, Jim Marshall, and Melissa O'Neill; and my Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where my thesis advisors were Michael Mateas and Charles Isbell. I subsequently worked in various roles at the University of California Santa Cruz, the IT University of Copenhagen (Denmark), and Falmouth University (UK), before coming to AU.

Teaching at AU: I most frequently teach Artificial Intelligence (CSC-468/668) and Programming Languages (CSC-421/621). I have also taught Game Development (GAME-615), Operating Systems (CSC-465/665), and several special-topics courses (CSC-496/696), most recently on generative AI.

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