Jesse Spencer-Smith

Education

Ph.D., Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Science, Indiana University

B.S., Computer Science, University of Florida

About

Jesse Spencer-Smith, PhD is Associate Dean for Partnerships and Innovation for the College of Connected Computing, Chief Data Scientist and Director for the Data Science Institute and the Masters of AI Program, Professor of the Practice and Faculty Head for Sutherland House at Vanderbilt University. He was also appointed by Governor Lee to the State of Tennessee’s AI Advisory Council. As Associate Dean, he is leading the industry affiliates AI Factory program for the new College of Connected Computing, and invites you to reach out if you’d like to partner with the CCC on adopting AI. As Chief Data Scientist, he leads a team of data scientists and postdoctoral fellows who collaborate with academic and business partners, and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on artificial intelligence. He consults with researchers and business leaders on using, training and developing new AI models, and has developed and led workshops on AI for audiences from senior executives in industry to high schoolers. He has been invited to speak on AI internationally to academic, industry, and government conferences focused on science, healthcare, financial services, executive leadership, and service industries. He has published on AI and its applications in areas including astrophysics, archeology, pharmaceuticals, education research, medical research, negotiation, and others. He was previously at HCA Healthcare for nine years, where as Director of Data Science he built the first data science team for the company and was charged with enabling data science across the enterprise through training, mentoring, skills assessments and consulting with business units on data science and AI preparedness. At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he was an Assistant Professor of Psychology in Quantitative Methods and was a Beckman Fellow at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. In high school, he founded an early software technology company that developed solutions for civil engineers using the first generations of personal computers.

Research Focus

AI

Publications

Qualitative research methods
Wise, A. F., Gresalfi, M., & Spencer-Smith, J. (2026). Why AI is Not the Enemy: Opportunities to Strengthen Core Commitments of Qualitative Inquiry through Trustworthy AI-in-the-Loop Analysis. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 25. doi: 10.1177/16094069261435579.

Applied AI in structural biology / chemistry
Kuang, X., Liu, Y. L., Lin, X., Spencer-Smith, J., Derr, T., Wu, Y., Bitter, H., Hu, Y., Meiler, J., & Su, Z. (2025). Superwater as a generative AI framework to predict water molecule positions on protein structures. Communications Chemistry, 8, 397. doi: 10.1038/s42004-025-01789-4.

Generative AI methods / prompt engineering
White, J., Fu, Q., Hays, S., Sandborn, M., Olea, C., Gilbert, H., Elnashar, A., Spencer-Smith, J., & Schmidt, D. C. (2023). A Prompt Pattern Catalog to Enhance Prompt Engineering with ChatGPT. Proceedings of the 30th Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs (PLoP 2023).