AUTHORS
Lance Eaton
Dr. Lance Eaton believes education should be accessible to everyone, though figuring out how keeps him busy. Since 2011, Lance has worked as an instructional designer and faculty developer throughout New England, teaching across disciplines that shouldn't fit on one business card: history, English, technology, education, and social sciences. This eclectic background means he's constantly learning alongside colleagues and discovering he doesn't know as much as he thought. His PhD from UMass Boston explored why scholars turn to academic pirate networks for research literature, revealing much about what's broken in academic publishing. His current work wrestles with digital tools' possibilities and challenges in education. He's drawn to questions without easy answers: How do we ensure technology expands access rather than creating barriers? How do we navigate AI without losing what makes learning human? Lance believes the best insights come from collaboration because none of us have all the answers.
James Genone
As Senior Vice Chancellor for Learning Strategy, James develops the overall philosophy, approach, and strategies associated with learning across the university, ensuring that Northeastern remains at the forefront of global education trends. This collaborative work leverages cutting-edge technologies, progressive teaching methodologies, and data-driven insights to shape learning experiences for students and faculty, helping them to thrive across a variety of rapidly evolving contexts.James has been passionate about creating transformative educational experiences for over two decades. Before joining Northeastern, he held diverse leadership roles in education design, learning innovation, product development, and interdisciplinary research at Minerva University, Minerva Project, and Atypical AI.James holds a doctorate in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, where he also earned his bachelor’s degree, and a master’s degree in philosophy from Boston College. He completed postdoctoral work at Stanford University and began his career in education as an assistant professor of philosophy at Rutgers University, Camden.
Laurie Nardone
Laurie Nardone has been a Teaching Professor in the Northeastern’s Writing Program since 2008 and its Director since 2021. She earned her PhD from Emory University. In the classroom, Laurie teaches First-Year Writing and Advanced Writing for the Tech Professions and sees writing as a way for students to think about and solve pressing problems. She also team-teaches “Love and Hate” with colleagues from the Criminology and Criminal Justice Department; she prefers just focusing on the love part of the class. Her teaching philosophy emphasizes that writing is fundamentally a social act, so building community and engaging in genuine conversation are essential ingredients for becoming a stronger writer. When she's not working with students and colleagues, you'll likely find Laurie with knitting needles in hand, at the beach whenever possible, or cheering on the Celtics. As with knitting and the Celtics, good writing requires patience, disappointment, reflection, and resilience.
Samuel V. Scarpino
Samuel V. Scarpino, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Public Health and Health Sciences in the Bouvé College of Health Sciences and the Director of AI + Life Sciences in the Institute for Experiential AI. He also holds faculty appointments in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences, the Network Science Institute, the Barnett Institute for Chemical and Biological Analysis, and the Roux Institute. Outside Northeastern, he is an External Professor at the Vermont Complex Systems Institute and the Santa Fe Institute. Scarpino’s research leverages an AI-in-the-loop framework to study the structure and function of complex living systems—from cellular-level processes, such as transcriptomic networks, to population-level processes, such as public health responses to epidemics. Scarpino’s work has appeared in journals such as Nature, Science, Nature Medicine, PNAS, Clinical Infectious Diseases, and Nature Physics. He has received funding from organizations including the NSF, CDC, Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, Rockefeller Foundation, and Patrick J. McGovern Foundation. He also regularly collaborates with industry partners. The New York Times, Wired, the Boston Globe, National Geographic, Vice News, and numerous other venues have covered his research. Before joining Northeastern, Scarpino was the Vice President of Pathogen Surveillance at The Rockefeller Foundation and an Assistant Professor of Mathematics & Statistics at the University of Vermont. Scarpino earned his doctoral degree from The University of Texas at Austin in 2013 and was a Santa Fe Institute Omidyar Fellow from 2013 to 2016.