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Alfred Essa#
Alfred Essa is an author, researcher, educator, technology executive, and entrepreneur.
Alfred graduated with High Honors in Philosophy, Magna Cum Laude from Haverford College. He received M.A. and M.Phil from Yale University, where he also taught in the Directed Studies program for honors students in the first-year.
Author, Researcher
His most recent book is Practical AI for Business Leaders, Product Managers and Entrepreneurs, published by DeGruyter.
His most recent research article are:
“Back to Bloom: Why theory matters in closing the achivement gap” (2023), which appears as a chapter in Data Analytics and Adaptive Learning: Research Perspectives.
“The Future of Post-Secondary Education in the Age of AI” (2024) will appear as a chapter in a Special Issue: Is Online Technology the Hope in Uncertain Times for Higher Education?
His paper, co-authored by Hanan Ayad, on Student Success demonstrated one of the first applications of machine learning for predictive modeling.
“Student success system: risk analytics and data visualization using ensembles of predictive models” (2012). In Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on learning analytics and knowledge (pp. 158-161). Based on the research, he led development of the Desire2Learn product called the “Brightspace Student Success System”.
Educator
As educator he has taught a variety of courses in computer science and philosophy at Yale University, Austin College, New York Institute of Technology, and St. Paul College.
Currently, he is the organizer and primary instructor for Python for Absolute Beginners, Data Science for Absolute Beginners, and Machine Learning for Absolute Beginner Meetups. The Meetups have a combined membership of more than 3000 students.
Technology Executive
Alfred has been CIO at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Assoc. Vice Chancellor and Deputy CIO at Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, Director of Innovation and Analytics at Desire2Learn, and VP of R&D and Analytics at McGraw-Hill Education.
Enterpreneur
As entrepreneur he is CEO of AI-FutureMinds Inc, a startup that is applying generative AI to improve teaching and learning for adult learners.