Recent News
Cal Poly Researchers Awarded NEH Grant to Study Africans in Early California History
Jan 22, 2025
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 21, 2025
San Luis Obispo, California — A Cal Poly team led by history lecturer Dr. Cameron Jones and computer science professor Dr. Foaad Khosmood has been awarded $150,000 by the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) for their project AfricanCalifornios.org: A Digital History of the Role of Afro-descendants in Early Spanish and Mexican California (1768-1850).
The award was announced last week by the NEH as one of 219 funded nationwide by the federal agency. Of the 31 funding announcements for California institutions, the Cal Poly award is the third highest after projects at UCLA and USC. The interdisciplinary proposal was jointly submitted by the two colleges and the Institute for Advanced Technology and Public Policy (IATPP). Cal Poly students from both history and computer science departments are already working on the project.
Scholars and the public readily accept that Afro-descendants populated Spanish and Mexican California, though little work has been done on the topic. Often cited is California’s 1790 census which identifies roughly 19% of their populations as being of African descent. The extent of the impact of Afro-descendants in early California, however, has been little understood. This is because most Californians of African descent elided their origins in church records. They hoped that Spain and later Mexico’s desire for Hispanicized settlers could overcome their perceived inferior origin that elsewhere barred them from entering the higher echelons of society. At least anecdotally this seemingly worked, as the last Mexican Governor of California, Pio Pico, was a well-known Afro-descendant. However, the larger narrative of the role of African descendants in early California history has remained largely hidden.
This project uses innovative computational techniques from natural language processing and data science to create user-friendly visualizations that allow scholars, students, K-12 teachers and the public alike to understand the role of Africans and African descendants in California History up to the statehood in 1850. To accomplish this the team will complete a comprehensive website, AfricanCalifornios.org. The site will host histories, visualizations, and databases, as well as lesson plans for students from 4th grade to college-level for teachers to use.
As one NEH evaluator stated: “[The project] is an important and much needed corrective to the dominant narrative in California history, the history of the U.S. West, Chicana/o/x and Mexican American History, and Borderlands History”
The public is invited to attend a special lecture, presentation and information session on the African Californios project on Thursday, February 20, 2025 at Cal Poly PAC Phillips Hall (006 - 0124) starting at 5:10 PM. Media and interested community members are encouraged to attend.
Cameron D. Jones, project director, is an award-winning author with multiple publications on the Spanish American borderlands. He has been a part-time lecturer in the history department at Cal Poly for the last ten years. Foaad Khosmood, project co-director, is Forbes Professor of Computer Engineering, and research director at IATPP. Project members include computer science students Anthony Colin Herrera, Marco Araiza, and Savannah Bosley and history students Jack T. Martin and Aaron Prieto.
IATPP is Cal Poly’s University-wide institute dedicated to interdisciplinary research on socially impactful projects involving advanced technology.
For more information please see: https://www.africancalifornios.org
Digital Humanities 2024
Jan 22, 2025
Two IATPP papers were accepted at Digital Humanities 2024. Dr. Cameron Jones and Dr. Foaad Khosmood along with five students visited the conference held at George Mason University and presented the two papers.
Cal Poly students Jack White (HIST), Anthony Colin Herrera (CSSE) and Marco Araiza (CSSE) presented the paper on African Californios
The team presented two papers
- AfricanCalifornios.org: Reconstructing the African past of Spanish and Mexican California, Jones, Cameron David; Khosmood, Foaad; Ariza, Marco; Colin, Anthony; Martin, Jack
- The Digital Democracy Corpus: Comprehensive Proceedings of Four State Legislatures 2015-2018, Khosmood, Foaad; Dekhtyar, Alex; Ellwein, Sarah; White, Bella
AI and Education: Teaching the age of ChatGPT
Mar 14, 2023
IATPP presents a community session with technology experts, educators and stakeholders on the impact and future of AI technologies like large language models for the classroom. Tickets are free and open to public. Limited seating.
IATPP visits CalMatters in Sacramento
Dec 16, 2022
IATPP team visited CalMatters, a California nonprofit news corporation in Sacramento California. Professors Khosmood, Dekhtyar and several students and staff from the Digital Democracy project did a presentation on the project and received feedback from CalMatters data journalism team.
Several Cal Poly student fellows from the Central Coast Data Science Partnership also attended. The students will be working on Digital Democracy project for the duration of the academic year.
Dr. Khosmood interviewed on Digital Democracy
Jan 28, 2022
Foaad Khosmood was interviewed by Professor Deb. Donig for the Technically Human Podcast, mainly on the topic of Digital Democracy.
Reporters project receives new support to build statehouse coverage system
Feb 13, 2020
Multidisciplinary collaboration between California Polytechnic State University
and University of Miami will use Knight Foundation support to create AI-driven wire service for statehouse coverage
SAN LUIS OBISPO, CALIF. Feb. 13, 2020. A $200,000 investment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation will help Cal Poly Institute for Advanced Technology and Public Policy (IATPP) develop an artificial intelligence system that will strengthen news coverage of state and local governments, the IATPP announced.
Researchers aim to build a prototype news wire service where narrative content covering state legislatures is automatically generated from primary data sources, and can be distributed to local and regional news organizations for publication. The ambition is to empower hometown media to receive articles specifically covering the activities of their state representatives and issue of local/regional significance that are currently absent because of limited reporting resources and/or being overlooked by traditional wire services.
“An informed citizenry is crucial to a healthy democracy, but the public is rapidly losing access to this type of information,” said Dr. Foaad Khosmood, Primary Investigator on the grant. “Our approach is to use semi-structured primary source data from state legislative proceedings in California and Florida to automatically generate quality, relevant and factual news content as a service to local news organizations.”
AI For Reporters is a multi-institutional collaboration between California Polytechnic State University, and the University of Miami’s School of Communications. Other strategic partners include Graz University of Technology Institute of Interactive Systems and Data Science (ISDS) and Google.
“This project represents an unprecedented partnership between the engineering strength of Cal Poly and the journalism prowess of the University of Miami for the benefit of supporting state-level journalism,” added Professor Lindsay Grace, Knight Chair at University of Miami and co-PI on the project.
The collaboration comes at a time when statehouse reporting is at an all-time low. According to a report by PEW Research Center, full‑time newspaper newsroom staffing declined by 30% between 2003 through 2012, and less than one-third of U.S. newspapers assign any reporters — full time or part time — to statehouses. The result is that the media — the primary entity the public relies on to monitor and report important issues — is no longer able to effectively serve this important function. As the "watchguard" function of the press is diminished, so too is the ability of a well-informed public to engage with and impact the decision-making process and outcomes of their government.
The project is also partnering with real newsrooms to test and verify the solution. “Among the exciting changes in media today are the new tools and technologies available for creative and compelling stories," said David Lesher, editor and co-founder of CalMatters, a nonprofit, multimedia news organization based in Sacramento. "AI, in the hands of an experienced, independent journalist, can broaden a reporter's sources for information and make stories more relevant to a specific audience.”
“Many local new organizations no longer have the necessary resources to cover state legislative hearings, press conferences and other state and municipal government proceedings,” said Paul Cheung, Knight Foundation director for journalism and technology innovation. “This collaboration will explore the viability of using AI as an alternative reporting tool for local news organizations to enhance coverage.”
##
Contacts:
 Prof. Foaad Khosmood Forbes Associate Prof. of Computer Engineering IATPP Research Director foaad -at- calpoly -dot- edu |
Prof. Lindsay Grace Knight Chair University of Miami School of Communicatinos lgrace -at- miami -dot- edu |
GATO 365 educational technologies
Nov 26, 2019
GATO 365 brings low-cost and scaleable smart educational technologies to opportunity-zone communities by providing learning infrastructure for hundreds of students with a single device per classroom.
Researchers:
- Dr. Immanuel Williams
- Steven Luu
Panoptyk Engine: Information driven social simulations
Sep 20, 2019
Project Panoptyk is a game engine designed to run Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) games with information creation, sharing, and exchange as the central gameplay focus. This engine is a work in progress, intended to serve as a platform for simulating human/robot interaction, as well as automatic generation of game assets, quests, and real-estate. The project also aims to create an open platform allowing indie and research communities to experiment with MMO concepts. In pursuit of these goals, we identify and address a number of challenges that have traditionally made it difficult for independent designers or researchers to be competitive in creation of new MMO games.
Students:
- Mitch Miller
- Sean Mendonca
- Nathan Philliber
- Sherry Lin
Publications:
Miller, Mitchell, et al. "Panoptyk: information driven MMO engine." Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. ACM, 2019.
IATPP Looks Ahead
Sep 15, 2019
San Luis Obispo, California — Cal Poly’s Institute for Advanced Technology and Public Policy that has received over $10 million in funding for its Digital Democracy initiative is starting off the 2019 academic year with five active projects and initiatives.
The research institute is focused on emerging technologies that have the ability to impact the civic space and includes a portfolio of artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, data mining and more specialized focuses including deep-fake detection and records analysis.
The projects include AI for Reporters, Anti-Bot Operations, Panopytk Information Engine, IOT Data Privacy and Security, Gato 365 Learning Center. Research Director, Foaad Khosmood P.hD., who was a key manager in the Digital Democracy project is involved in a number of these active initiatives.
Founder and Advisor Sam Blakeslee commented on IATPP stated, “The Institute at Cal Poly is an ideal staging ground for technologies that have the chance to positively affect both policy and citizen life. The current projects are exciting and have potential to captivate.”
***
George Will Cal Poly Alumni and Intern Fellow
IATPP discusses AI with California's LHC
Feb 14, 2019
The Institute for Advanced Technology and Public Policy (IATPP) was invited to the Spring session of the Little Hoover Commission (LHC) on the subject of Artificial Intelligence. The LHC functions as a publicly funded think tank with non-partisan mission of conducting research and informing the rest of the California state government of important policy implications.
IATTP founder, Sam Blakeslee and Sr. Research Fellows Foaad Khosmood and Elise St. John traveled to San Francisco to take part in the discussion. Blakeslee and Khosmood, drawing on their experience with Digital Democracy urged the government to produce better quality machine-readable records that can be better analyzed by citizens and researchers alike.
The group also discussed implications of AI with respect to workforce education, privacy and ethics. Other invited guests included representatives from Microsoft, IBM, Adobe, and Governors office on Technology.