Recent News
- 2026-10-12 Teaching a session on how modern agentic AI systems are built on top of LLMs and various other pieces of technology, in the American University Kogod School of Business's training program for Korean government officials
- 2026-09-14 On a grant review panel for the National Science Foundation's TIP directorate
- 2026-08-26 New 2026 edition of my Institutions Active in Technical Games Research ranking & directory
- 2026-08-04 Talk at the Arlington Public Library, where I gave a bit of context on the history of AI and games
- 2026-05-11 I am no longer interim department chair! (Mike Treanor has returned from leave to relieve me.)
- 2026-04-08 Talk at Science On Tap DC, where my pitch was that base LLMs are still interesting (especially if you are a scientist)
- 2026-03-10 At the University of Gothenburg for a research/project meeting
- 2026-03-05 Invited talk on AI for storytelling at the Rochester Institute of Technology, hosted by Justus Robertson
- 2026-02-19 Presenting our generative audio models research at an internal AU AI research conference
- 2026-01-12 Spring 2026 teaching: Artificial Intelligence again!
- 2026-01-08 On a grant review panel for the National Science Foundation CISE/IIS Robust Intelligence program
- 2026-01-05 I'm interim department chair for the Computer Science Department for Spring 2026, while our fearless leader is on leave
- 2026-01-01 Happy New Year! I made an arXiv AI/ML Catch-Up webapp. It is half joke, half serious.
- 2025-11-10 In Edmonton, Canada for AIIDE 2025 this week, where we're presenting our paper Expressive range characterization of open text-to-audio models
- 2025-10-22 Updated, interactive web version of (all but one of) the examples from the PCG Book's chapter on using answer-set programming (ASP) for level generation
- 2025-09-22 New paper: Expressive range characterization of open text-to-audio models (AIIDE 2025)
- 2025-09-01 I was granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor!
- 2025-08-25 Fall 2025 teaching: Artificial Intelligence & Programming Languages
- 2025-08-11 In Gothenburg, Sweden for the 4th and final working visit on our (joint with Swen Gaudl) AI game design project
- 2025-07-16 New 2025 edition of my Institutions Active in Technical Games Research ranking & directory
- 2025-07-07 Teaching a session on the steps involved in building an LLM and where the data comes from, in the 2025 version of the American University Training Program for Korean Government Officials
- 2025-05-26 At a meeting of the EU GameTable COST action Procedural Content Generation working group
- 2025-05-20 In Gothenburg, Sweden for the 3rd working visit on our (joint with Swen Gaudl) AI game design project
- 2025-03-27 New paper: Slice of Life: A social physics game with interactive conversations using symbolically grounded LLM-based generative dialogue (FDG 2025)
- 2025-03-10 In Gothenburg, Sweden for the 2nd work week on our (joint with Swen Gaudl) AI game design project
- 2025-02-25 Talk on Language Model Crossover in the department colloquium of our next-door-neighbor department, AU Math/Stat
- 2025-01-13 Spring 2025 teaching: Artificial Intelligence & Applications of Generative AI. That's right, it's all AI, all the time! Applications of Generative AI is a new special-topics course, with a new syllabus.
- 2024-11-28 New paper: Language Model Crossover: Variation through Few-Shot Prompting (ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization 4:4). This is the much-expanded and peer-reviewed journal version of our preprint originally posted in 2023.
- 2024-11-11 Visiting the University of Gothenburg for the week to kick off an international collaboration grant, Foraging Games: Exploring generative AI systems to tackle high-dimensional game design spaces, with Swen Gaudl
- 2024-10-01 Happy to have Arnav Jhala visiting us today at the AU Game Center
- 2024-09-19 Invited to an AI dinner at the Atlantic Festival, hosted by Nicholas Thompson and Microsoft
- 2024-08-26 Fall 2024 teaching: Artificial Intelligence & Programming Languages. I've put together a new syllabus for AI that tries to balance coverage of fundamentals like search and reinforcement learning with emerging topics like large language models.
- 2024-06-25 Visit to Google DC on behalf of the AU College of Arts and Sciences
- 2024-06-03 On a grant review panel for the National Science Foundation CISE/IIS Robust Intelligence program
- 2024-05-21 At the 2024 Foundations of Digital Games Conference this week
- 2024-05-13 Updated and expanded v3 preprint: Language Model Crossover: Variation through few-shot prompting
- 2024-04-29 New paper: Prompt Wrangling: On replication and generalization in large language models for PCG levels
- 2024-04-19 New paper: Prototyping Slice of Life: Social physics with symbolically grounded LLM-based generative dialogue
2024-03-29 Faculty panel: Perspectives on AI, CAS admitted grad students day
2024-02-26 Research & collaboration visit this week to the University of Gothenburg, visiting Swen Gaudl
2024-01-16 Spring 2024 teaching: Programming Languages & Generative AI in Games
2023-10-30 Invited to an AI dinner co-hosted by Nicholas Thompson and Kent Walker
2023-10-07 Updated and expanded v2 preprint: Language Model Crossover: Variation through few-shot prompting
2023-09-07 Attended Navigating AI's Power and Responsibilities, hosted by Axios
2023-08-28 Fall 2023 teaching: Artificial Intelligence & Programming Languages
2023-08-21 At the 2023 IEEE Conference on Games this week
2023-08-14 Research seminar with Dennis G. Wilson and Amy K. Hoover, at the New Jersey Institute of Technology
2023-07-20 New 2023 edition of my Institutions Active in Technical Games Research ranking & directory
2023-06-30 Research visit and seminar talk at the University of Hertfordshire, hosted by Christoph Salge
2023-06-28 Invited talk at the Queen Mary University of London, Analyzing state spaces of Atari games
2023-06-27 Research visit and seminar talk at the University of Essex, hosted by Spyros Samothrakis
2023-04-23 New workshop paper: Towards an authorial leverage evaluation framework for expressive benefits of deep generative models in story writing
2023-03-24 At the Philosophy of Deep Learning Conference this weekend
2023-02-23 New preprint on our evolution-meets-LLMs method, language model crossover, or LMX. arXiv: Language Model Crossover: Variation through few-shot prompting
2023-01-17 Spring 2023 teaching: Programming Languages & Operating Systems
2022-12-08 Visit to Google Mountain View, hosted by Sherol Chen
2022-12-04 At ICIDS 2022 this week
2022-11-01 Invited talk at Sarah Lawrence College, What Does Playing Games Tell Us About AI?
2022-10-14 New paper: Exploring the design space of social physics engines in games (ICIDS 2022)
2022-09-11 Blog post: Text-to-image for my inbox
2022-07-12 Software release: MCTSlib, an open-source library for Monte Carlo Tree Search
2022-07-09 At GECCO 2022 this weekend and upcoming week
2022-06-19 At Dagstuhl Seminar 22251 this week – my first in-person research event post-pandemic!
Mark J. Nelson