Leshell Hatley, Ph.D. – www.leshellhatley.com

Leshell Hatley, Ph.D. is the Director of STEM Programs at the American Association of University Women (AAUW). As a researcher and entrepreneur, she also leads Uplift, Inc., a 501c3 nonprofit STEAM education and consulting organization. Her 20+ years of research and teaching expertise includes topics such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and culturally relevant computer science/computer engineering education.

Leshell was recently recognized as one of the 50 Women in Robotics You Should Know in 2021 by RoboHub in celebration of Ada Lovelace Day.

In 2020, Leshell was recognized as one of the 20 most influential technologists in Baltimore by technical.ly.

Additionally, Leshell is the creator of Myles & Ayesha, digital friends (intelligent tutors) that help children learn.

Previous to joining AAUW, Dr. Hatley was an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Coppin State University. She and the students in her research lab, the Lab for Artificial Intelligence and its Applications (LAIA), won the 2016 USA White House HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) Maker & Innovation Challenge.

Uplift designed and facilitated YOUTH APPLab, the first mobile app development course for teens in the US, funded by the MacArthur Foundation (Winner of the 3rd Annual Digital Media & Learning Competition in 2009-2010) and is one of the first organizations to offer after school courses in Lego Mindstorms Robotics in Washington, DC over a decade ago.

Dr. Hatley is a passionate computer engineer, educator, and researcher who continuously combines these three attributes to create innovative approaches to teaching STEM concepts to students between the ages of 3 and 73. With over 20 years of teaching experience, Leshell leads teams of enthusiastic students, dedicated volunteer instructors, and teams of engineering to achieve award winning success, national news coverage, and innovative technology product designs. She's also a proud (2 time) graduate of Howard University.

Download CV 2016 Dissertation

November 2021 Dr. Hatley becomes a member of the MIT RAISE (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education) Advisory Board.
October 2021 Dr. Hatley was recognized as one of the 50 Women in Robotics You Should Know in 2021 by RoboHub in celebration of Ada Lovelace Day.
July 2021 The Lab for Artificial Intelligence and its Applications (LAIA) is now independently administered. It is no longer at Coppin State University. New website coming soon.
June 2021 Our Social Programmable Robot Team just published, Agentic Engagement with a Programmable Dialog System with ACM: International Computing Education Research (ICER) 2021
April 2021 Dr. Hatley participated in the "ACM AI | You Belong in AI! Podcast S2E3
April 2021 CMU, UPitt Research Collaborators and Dr. Hatley get paper published in proceedings for The 2021 Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education - Artificial Intelligence in Education Mind the Gap: AI for Equity and Inclusion. Paper Title = Explaining Engagement: Underrepresented Learner Behaviors in a Virtual Coding Camp
April 2021 Dr. Hatley participated in the video podcast “The Power of Gaming” on Learning Unwrapped.
March 2021: Dr. Hatley participates as a Cohort Member of the #WomenChangingPolicy Workshop hosted by the Mosaic Economic Project, an initiative of the Progressive Policy Institute.
March 2021: Dr. Hatley serves as panelist for Maryland Public Television's Indie Lens Pop Up screening of Coded Bias.
November 2020: Dr. Hatley is recognized as a REALList Engineer by technical.ly and is #WomenChangingPolicy.
October 2020: Dr. Hatley wins Google Award for Inclusion Research - "Developing a Dialogue System for a Culturally-Responsive Social Programmable Robot" with Dr. Erin Walker (University of Pittsburgh).
October 2020: Dr. Hatley wins a Google ExploreCSR Award (CSR = Computer Science Research) - "Providing a View Inside Computer Science Research: A One-Year Exploratory Experience." Students from Coppin State University, Baltimore City Community College, and Howard University are expected to participate!
October 2020: Data analysis begins for LAIA's research project on web-based math learning games for elementary school children.
September 2020: Dr. Hatley is the PI with Dr. Sahu as Co-PI for a $300K Capacity Building Grant from the National Security Agency for Cybersecurity Education Diversity Initiative (CEDI) . This grant provides resources towards the creation of a new degree program for students in the Mathematics and Computer Science Department.
August 2020: Undergraduate Research Team completes game ratings and the official project page for LAIA's web-based math learning games for elementary school children.
June 2020: LAIA & Dr. Hatley partnered with Arizona State University, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of Pittsburgh on the Collaborative Research: A Social Programmable Robot: Fostering Rapport to Improve Computer Science Skills and Attitudes Project.
April 2020: Dr. Hatley is approved for promotion to Associate Professor with Tenure.
March 2020: Ratings begin for the Math Games Research Project. I aM BPRC
February 2020: Math Games Undergraduate Research Team begins literature review regarding design considerations for math learning games.
February 2020: LAIA changes the name of the KEEPCLEAN app project to BMoreCLEAN.
January 2020: LAIA selects Undergraduate Research Team to begin research on web-based math learning games for elementary school children.
December 2019: Dr. Hatley represents Coppin State University on the Mid-Atlantic Space Grant Data Science Consortium and begins the process of joining the National Space Grant Foundation.
December 2019: Dr. Hatley hosts Mr. Moore and his junior computer science class from Carver HS again to finish their Scratch games.
November 2019: Dr. Hatley hosts Mr. Moore and his junior computer science class from Carver HS. They are introduced to Scratch.
November 2019: Dr. Hatley is invited to and participates in QEM NSF (DRL) Proposal Writing Workshop.
October 2019: LAIA formed 2019-2020 robotics education partnership with Coppin Academy High School.
September 2019: Dr. Hatley served as proposal reviewer for the Smithsonian Youth Access Grant.
August 2019: Dr. Hatley is invited to and participates in NSF Workshop to discuss Including Fairness, Equity, Accountability, and Transparency in computing-based (e.g. Artificial Intelligence) research, practice, and educational efforts at Georgia Tech.
June 2019: Dr. McCoy is CoPI and is awarded NSF ITEST-Advancing Informal STEM Learning program Award: Maryland Sports Data Analytics Camps for Youth in partnership with the University of Maryland, College Park.
June 2019: Dr. Hatley is invited to and participates in NSF Workshop to discuss Including Ethics in Data Science Pedagogy - EDSP-2019
June 2019: Dr. Hatley is invited to and begins NSF Collaborative Research: Exploring the Intersectional Relationship between Mathematics and Computing Identities for Black Girls and Women.
May 2019: Dr. Hatley is invited to participate in Morgan State University: Mobile Summer Institute on Scientific Teaching as part of the ASPIRE partnership between Johns Hopkins, Morgan State, and Coppin State.
April 2019: LAIA's #KeepClean project gets a new website!"
April 2019: LAIA Celebrates 3 Year Anniversary!
March 2019: LAIA launches software development and research project = codename "MoodRing."
December 2018: LAIA, ACM, ACMW sponsor Coppin's 'Hour of Code' Event
October 2018: LAIA began its Intelligent Website Chatbot project.
October 2018: Mercedes Williams took over @coppincs (instagram channel) to share experiences from the #HelloResearch Conference.
October 2018: LAIA Undergraduate Rearch Student Mercedes Williams attends #HelloResearch! A Research Conference for Undergraduate Women in Computer Science, and presents a poster on KeepClean!
October 2018: Dr. Hatley is recognized at the 1st Annual USM "Made in Maryland" celebration for her creation of the Myles & Ayesha Black Inventors Match Game
October 2018: Dr. Hatley participates on the panel entitled Engaging HBCU Faculty on Project-Based Learning in Silicon Valley" based on experiences in the Google Faculty-in-Residence program at the 34th Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Eastern Regional Conference.
September 2018: Students begin project for 2018-2019 HBCU Maker & Innovation Challenge.
August 2018: Dr. Hatley is awarded a $5K grant from the Abell Foundation to continue design and development of the Keep Clean app.
July 2018: LAIA hosts pilot summer programming camp for elementary school students.
June 2018: LAIA Students presents Keep Clean to Baltimore City officials and others working on litter challenge.
June 2018: Dr. Hatley and LAIA students join planning committee for Girls in CS Summit hosted by Code in the Schools.
May 2018: LAIA students make the ACM-W Chapter at CSU an official campus organization.
February 2018: LAIA Students competes in the 2018 HBCU Maker & Innovation Challenge with Keep Clean.
January 2018: LAIA Students app/web design project "oscar" becomes Keep Clean.
November 2017: LAIA Students being new app design project - codename = oscar.
November 2017: Dr. Hatley is awarded $15K from The Kapor Center.
November 2017: LAIA-sponsored, CSU Hacks students begin web-based software project: codename = oscar.
November 2017: With guidance from with LAIA, Coppin CS students apply for Google Internship for the very first time.
October 2017:LAIA launches http://www.coppincs.com.
October 2017:LAIA partners with Career Services to offer Resume Writing Workshop.
September 2017:LAIA launches Coppin CS Slack Community.
August 2017: Dr. Hatley continues work on campus as Google Faculty-in-Residence.
July 2017: Dr. Hatley attends Microsoft Faculty Summit on Artificial Intelligence
June-July 2017: Dr. Hatley becomes Google Faculty-in-Residence.
April 2017: Microsoft invites Dr. Hatley to attend the Faculty Summit on Artificial Intelligence
March 2017: Dr. Hatley gets accepted to in Google's Inaugural Summer 6-week Faculty-in-Residence Program
March 2017: LAIA Research Scientists (students) complete deployment of Rack One of donated Yahoo! servers
January 2017: Dr. Hatley speaks at Frostburg State University on Gamification
November 2016: Yahoo! donates 200 servers to LAIA and the Math and Computer Science Department.
September 2016: Dr. Hatley speaks at University of Maryland: College Park on Gamification
June 2016: LAIA wins 1st place the White House HBCU Maker & Innovation Challenge!
April 2016: The Lab for Artificial Intelligence and its Applications (LAIA) is born!
February 2016: Dr. Hatley joins Higher Education Video Game Alliance (HEVGA)
February 2016: Dr. Hatley joins Coppin State University as a member of Faculty (Assistant Professor)
2006-2016: Previous Research Projects