Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver

Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver is a Distinguished Professor in the School of Education, the Barbara B. Jacobs Chair in Education and Technology, director of the Center for Research on Learning and Technology, and a professor of learning sciences at Indiana University.

Hmelo-Silver’s research focuses on how people learn about complex phenomena and how technology can support that learning. She studies problem-based learning and collaborative inquiry, collaborative knowledge construction and computer-supported collaborative learning. She also studies the role of technology to support social knowledge construction and collaborative learning and problem-solving.

Her scholarship has bridged K-12 and higher education communities, providing them a process for implementing problem-based learning strategies in a variety of instructional settings with applications across many disciplines.

She is the co-principal investigator on the National Science Foundation’s AI Institute for Engaged Learning. She is the education lead on a team that will advance natural language processing, computer vision and machine learning by conducting research on narrative-centered learning technologies, embodied conversational agents and multi-model learning analytics to create deeply engaging, collaborative, story-based learning experiences.