Photo of Mark giving a public talk at Science on Tap DC, 2026

Mark J. Nelson

Associate 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).

A main theme of my work has been using games and interactive simulations as great domains to do AI research in, especially in exploring automated and procedural design, sequential decision-making, and formal models of complex interactive systems.

Much of my recent research has investigated how to harness the strengths of large language models (LLMs) and other generative AI systems (e.g. generative audio) while constraining their tendency towards generating hallucinated, difficult to control, and otherwise undesired outputs. I'm optimistic that drawing on insights from the longer history of research and practice in procedural content generation can help mitigate these issues.

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, complex systems, 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.

News:

Research:

Contact: