AI in Action: Fabian Offert & Eric Wang
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Join us for the second event in UCSB Library’s new speaker series, AI in Action Conversations with UCSB Researchers. The event features short presentations by Fabian Offert (Center for the Humanities and Machine Learning) and Eric Wang (Center for Responsible Machine Learning) on innovative applications of AI in their research, followed by a 30-minute discussion on broader trends, challenges, and ethical considerations.
This event may be photographed or recorded.
Advance registration is recommended as space is limited.
About the Speakers
Dr. Fabian Offert is Assistant Professor for the History and Theory of the Digital Humanities and Director of the Center for the Humanities and Machine Learning (HUML) at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research and teaching focuses on the epistemology, aesthetics, and politics of artificial intelligence. His most recent book project, Vector Media (Meson Press/University of Minnesota Press, 2026), provides the first comprehensive history and theory of vector space as a space of universal commensurability in contemporary machine learning. Offert is also principal investigator of the AI Forensics international research project on explainable artificial intelligence, supported by the Volkswagen Foundation, and was 2025 Rudolf Wittkower Fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome.
Dr. Xin (Eric) Wang is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department and Director of the Center for Responsible Machine Learning (CRML) at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He also serves as the Head of Research at Simular. His research interests include Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, and Machine Learning, with an emphasis on Multimodal and Embodied AI Agents. Previously, he was a faculty at UC Santa Cruz and also spent time at Google Research, Meta FAIR, Microsoft Research, and Adobe Research. Wang’s research aims to build intelligent multimodal AI agents that can understand the world, collaborate with humans, and perform real-world tasks—from everyday activities to high-stakes missions. His work spans multimodal representation learning, embodied AI for human-agent collaboration, and the ethical design of trustworthy AI systems.
About AI in Action
AI in Action: Conversations with UCSB Researchers aims to foster an open, interdisciplinary community exploring how AI can deepen understanding, expand access to knowledge, and inspire new forms of scholarship. The speaker series showcases how UC Santa Barbara researchers are using innovative applications of AI, from accelerating materials science and environmental modeling to uncovering new insights in language, art, and history. Each session includes presentations by UCSB faculty and research teams on how AI tools and methods are shaping their work, followed by discussion on broader trends, challenges, and ethical considerations.
AI in Action is co-led by UCSB Library and the UCSB AI Community of Practice (CoP), AI for Research Special Interest Group, with support from the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, Office of Research, Office of Teaching and Learning, Marine Science Institute, and National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.
