Seiji Isotani is the Faculty Director of the M.S.Ed. program in Artificial Intelligence and Learning Analytics at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.
Dr. Isotani is internationally recognized for his contributions to artificial intelligence in education (AIED), intelligent tutoring systems, and the gamification of learning. For more than 15 years, he has advanced research on how people learn with interactive and intelligent educational technologies. His work also examines how research, technology, and public policy can be combined to ensure that every student receives the personalized support needed to participate in meaningful and fulfilling educational experiences. Since 2017, he has served as a technical and scientific advisor to the Brazilian Ministry of Education, contributing to national projects and shaping educational policies that have affected more than 40 million students nationwide. A central focus of Dr. Isotani’s research is the design and implementation of AI-enabled educational approaches that can operate across diverse social, technological, and economic contexts. Among his key contributions, he pioneered AIED Unplugged, a methodology for bringing the benefits of artificial intelligence and personalized learning to schools and communities with limited access to digital infrastructure. He has also developed tools and methods for adapting gamification to learners, teachers, and educational settings.
His work is widely regarded for its potential to improve learning environments and make high-quality education more accessible and effective globally. In recognition of his contributions, Dr. Isotani was elected President of the International Artificial Intelligence in Education Society for the 2025–2027 term. At the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Dr. Isotani will continue to rethink how AI technologies can be designed and deployed in low-resource environments to support both students and teachers. He will also disseminate the concept of Elastic AI Pedagogy, an approach that uses AI to adapt pedagogical strategies to different educational contexts. This work will examine how teaching and learning practices can expand, contract, and reconfigure according to the infrastructure, resources, institutional capacity, and technological sophistication available in each setting, ranging from environments with extremely limited resources to those with advanced AI infrastructure. Dr. Isotani holds a Ph.D. in Information Engineering from Osaka University in Japan and completed postdoctoral research at Carnegie Mellon University. Before joining the University of Pennsylvania, he held academic positions at Harvard University and the University of São Paulo.
