Center Faculty Members

DIRECTOR

Susan Schneider, Ph.D., William F. Dietrich Chair in Philosophy in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, in collaboration with FAU’s Brain Institute, writes about the fundamental nature of the self and mind, especially from the vantage point of issues in philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence (AI), astrobiology, metaphysics and cognitive science. Schneider is also a distinguished scholar at the Library of Congress and NASA. The topics she has written about most recently include the mind-body problem, super intelligent AI, the nature of life, the mathematical nature of physics and whether the mind is a program.

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

Elan Barenholtz, Ph.D., is assistant director of the Center for the Future Mind, an associate professor at Charles E. Schmidt College of Science and co-director of the Machine Perception and Cognitive Robotics (MPCR) Lab. Barenholtz earned his doctorate degree in experimental psychology and cognitive science at Rutgers University, New Jersey, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University, Rhode Island. Barenholtz began his career as an experimental psychologist, investigating human perception from a behavioral and cognitive-science perspective and co-founded the MPCR to develop theories and applications of broad brain properties and test them embedded in robotic agents and applied to real-world problems.

Marina Banchetti, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters. She earned her doctorate degree in philosophy from the University of Miami and specializes in phenomenology, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and history and philosophy of science with a current focus on history and philosophy of chemistry. Banchetti is the Florida Department of Education's philosophy discipline coordinator for the statewide course numbering system and was recently appointed as associate editor of Foundations of Chemistry, which is the leading international journal in her specialization. She is a member of the executive committee of the international society for the philosophy of chemistry and has been appointed to the advisory board of the society for phenomenology and philosophy of science. She has been featured in journals, presented papers at numerous conferences and published her first book in July 2020 titled “The Chemical Philosophy of Robert Boyle: Mechanicism, Chymical Atoms and Emergence.”

Justin Bernstein, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters. Bernstein earned his doctorate degree in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania. He received his master’s in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and his bachelor’s in philosophy from Vassar College, New York. Prior to joining FAU, Bernstein co-directed a program in which he and other instructors taught philosophy to students from a variety of public schools in Philadelphia. Bernstein was a Hecht-Levi postdoctoral research fellow at the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University, Maryland. His research falls into two broad areas, bioethics/ethics and political philosophy. Bernstein is a passionate teacher and his research has been published in a variety of venues. He received the University of Pennsylvania Penn Prize in excellence in teaching by graduate students, as well as the University of Pennsylvania Penn Center for teaching and learning graduate fellowship in teaching excellence.

Randy D. Blakely, Ph.D., is a professor in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine and executive director of the Brain Institute. Blakely, a native of Columbus, Ga., earned his bachelor’s in philosophy summa cum laude from Emory University, Georgia, followed by a doctorate degree in neuroscience from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Maryland. He also pursued postdoctoral training at the Yale University Howard Hughes Medical Institute Center for Molecular Neuroscience, Connecticut. His research identified the genes encoding targets of widely used antidepressant medications and psychostimulants, including cocaine and amphetamines. As an independent investigator, Blakely has pursued studies of the genetics, structure, regulation and pathophysiology of synaptic transporters and has appeared in more than 300 research articles and scholarly reviews and gained multiple honors. Blakely sets institute priorities for research, education and outreach, oversees the development and acquisition of research infrastructure, leads recruitment efforts for Brain Institute investigators, and leads efforts to encourage translation of neuroscience discoveries.

William Hahn, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. Hahn earned his master’s degree in mathematics and computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and in 2016 earned his doctorate degree at Florida Atlantic University. Hahn is also the director of the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences, which is dedicated to understanding the principles and mechanisms that underlie complex behavior, and founder and co-director of the Machine Perception and Cognitive Robotics lab. With a background in mathematics and physics, Hahn researches medical imaging, neural networks and deep learning. Hahn was also involved in the creation of Florida Atlantic University’s first and one-of-a-kind-robotic dog pup, Astro.

Jason Hallstrom, Ph.D., is a professor in the College of Engineering and Computer Science and executive director of the Institute for Sensing and Embedded Network Systems Engineering. Hallstrom earned his doctorate degree from Ohio State University. He develops technology that enables visibility into the physical world for purposes of understanding and automation. The applications range from environmental science, to healthcare, to sculpture and includes embedded network systems, internet-scale sensing infrastructure, data analytics and computer education.

Clevis Headley, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters. Headley earned his doctorate and master’s degrees in philosophy from the University of Miami. Previously, he earned a bachelor’s in philosophy from The University of the South, Tennessee, the place he said first inspired his passion for philosophy. Headley specializes in Africana philosophy, critical race theory, epistemology, analytic philosophy, philosophy of language and philosophy of mathematics. He has presented at many conferences, published considerable journal publications and co-edited two books. In addition, he was co-founder of the Caribbean Philosophical Association and presented the keynote address at the 63rd annual conference of the Florida Philosophical Association.

Frederick Hoffman, Ph.D., is a professor in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. He earned his doctorate degree from the University of Virginia. Hoffman’s research has been infinite groups and the related area of combinatorics. He worked in coding, cryptology and artificial intelligence expert systems in the 1980’s. Hoffman is a founding faculty of the FAU computer science department, councilman of the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications and conference chair for 14 of the International Symposia on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics. Hoffman served as president and governor of the Florida section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), and chaired the national Mathematical Association of America (MAA) committee on mini-courses. In 1997, he received the Douglas D. Dankel II Award for service to the Florida Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Society.

Ashley Kennedy, Ph.D., is an associate professor of Philosophy in the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College. She earned her bachelor’s in astronomy and physics followed by her doctorate degree in philosophy, both from the University of Virginia. She is passionate about introducing students to philosophical reasoning and teaches symbolic logic, philosophy of medicine, biomedical ethics and theory of knowledge. Kennedy’s two main areas of research are diagnostic reasoning, and global health justice. She has ongoing projects in reproductive health and pharmaceutical ethics. Her recent work has appeared in British Medical Journal, Bioethics, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy and Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice.

Kevin Lanning, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology in the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College. He earned his doctorate degree from the University of California. Lanning teaches psychology of personality, political psychology, behavioral economics and data science. With his experience as an associate professor at Oregon State University, he uses data science to study human nature. Lanning’s work includes three main themes: analysis of language, analysis of social networks and the role of political beliefs in our self-concepts.

Andrea Miller, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters. They earned their doctorate degree from the University of California studying cultural studies with a designated emphasis in science and technology studies. Miller’s research examines how technologies and technoscientific practices emerge through histories of policing and empire and how relationships between technology and sensibilities of security shape racialized life and environments as well as practices of world-making and political insurgencies. Their publications and research have examined racialized practices of pre-emption in U.S. drone warfare and in their current book project, they utilize ethnographic and archival research methods to understand deployments of the ecosystem concept in military-driven nuclear, cybersecurity and urban redevelopment projects.

Richard Shusterman, Ph.D., is a Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Humanities, professor of philosophy and English, and director of the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture. He earned a bachelor's degree in English and philosophy, and later a master’s degree in philosophy, magna cum laude, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Later, he earned a doctorate degree in philosophy from St. John’s College of the University of Oxford in England. He has held academic appointments in Paris, Berlin, and Hiroshima and was awarded senior research Fulbright and National Endowment for the Humanities. His research covers many topics in the human and social sciences with particular emphasis on questions of philosophy, aesthetics, culture, language, identity, and embodiment.

Gerald Sim, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters and earned his doctorate degree from the University of Iowa. Sim’s research is based in theoretically informed film and media studies, including essays about data platonism in Moneyball, Netflix’s data operations, and its place in media history, CNBC personality Jim Cramer’s Marxist investment advice, Edward Said’s influence on film studies, film music theory and cinema’s transition to digital cinematography. Sim is currently interested in how data epistemologies determine political agency. His work-in-progress examines the relationship between film culture and public imaginings of datafication. It includes studies of how iconic films have come to function within the cultural infrastructures of technological literacy. Sim published “The Subject of Film and Race: Retheorizing Politics, Ideology and Cinema” (Bloomsbury) in 2014 and “Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema: Poetics of Space, Sound and Stability“ in 2020.