San Diego State University · NSF-supported

Welcome to the Future
AI, Science & Robotics

Opening Keynote · July 10–11, 2026 · SDSU (room announced before the day)

Let's wake up — interactive!

Raise your hand if… ✋

…you've ever talked to Siri, Alexa, or Google
…you've played a video game this week 🎮
…you've used ChatGPT or made an AI picture 🖼️
…you play a musical instrument 🎹
…you've ever built or coded a robot 🤖

FIRST THINGS FIRST

Meet your guides

Three professors. One secret in common — can you spot it? 🕵️

Your guide #1

Prof. Qi Wang · Aerospace Engineering, SDSU

I study turbulence — the wild swirls in air and water 🌪️
I use AI to design flying machines 🛩️
…and I'm a pianist. Engineering by day, piano by night 🎹

Qi Wang performing at the piano — …by night 🎹

Your guide #2

Prof. Ang Li · Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Maryland

Teaches machines to learn — on giant computers AND tiny chips
Makes AI you can trust
His team flew here to show you how ChatGPT works — and if a machine can imagine the future 🌀

Your guide #3

Prof. Yin Yu · School of Art & Design, SDSU

Artist + designer + engineer — her art has traveled the world
Builds soft robots — squishy machines inspired by animals 🐙
This afternoon YOU build your own soft robot ✋🤖

octopus — nature's soft robot — nature's engineer 🐙

silicone soft robot actuator in a hand — …and the soft robot you'll build

Did you spot it?

None of us stays in one box

⚛️🎹

Qi

Aerospace engineer · pianist

🧠🤔

Ang

Computer engineer · asks "can machines imagine?"

🎨🤖

Yin

Artist · roboticist

No coincidence — it's the big idea of this workshop. And it's a very OLD idea.

THE BIG WHY

Why this workshop exists

A 2,400-year-old idea whose time has come again.

Athens, ~380 BC

In Plato's Academy, knowledge was ONE

Music, math, stars, shapes — all learned together. No walls.

Pinch a string in half → the same note, one octave up. You already know that leap — it's “Some-where…” from Over the Rainbow 🌈. Music IS fractions.

Over Plato's door: "Know geometry — or don't come in!" 📐

[10:10–13:10 | ~3 min] — the storytelling peak. Paint the scene: olive trees, students arguing about the stars, the same person doing math in the morning and music in the afternoon. The ancient curriculum (the "quadrivium") literally bundled arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy as ONE course of study. Make the fractions SING (no audio here on purpose — the real demos live in your Science & Music slides this afternoon): • 2:1 (octave): sing "Some-WHEEERE" from Over the Rainbow with the room — that leap IS the half-string. • 3:2 (fifth): have them sing "Twin-kle twin-kle" — the prettiest interval in music is literally the fraction 3/2 (same jump that opens Star Wars). Tease, don't spoil: "This afternoon at the Science & Music session you'll HEAR all of this at a real piano — including what happens when the numbers get messy. Bring your goosebumps." Callback: "Remember all the musician hands in the icebreaker? Pythagoras would say every one of you is already doing mathematics."

Then something happened

Knowledge exploded — and split apart

We learned SO much, no one head could hold it all 🤯
So we split it up: math here, art there, music way over there
The walls between subjects grew taller and taller 🧱
Now you're asked: are you a "math kid" or an "art kid"? 🤨

Pick one? Says who?

Now — the exciting part

Time to reunite them — because of AI

We built walls because no head could hold it all. Guess what — now one can. 🤖

One AI does math, stories, pictures AND music — it never picked a box
All that deep knowledge? Now you can just ask for it
The new superpower: connecting subjects, not memorizing one

romanesco broccoli fractal — a vegetable doing geometry

river delta fractal — a river drawing a tree

Nature never divided itself. Now our tools don't either.

[15:10–17:10 | ~2 min] — reunification reason #1: the TECHNICAL one. The logic, spelled out slowly: we divided knowledge ONLY because no single human could hold it all. AI is the first "mind" that can — the same model that proves a theorem writes a poem and sketches a picture. The original reason for the walls is gone. Concrete for kids: "Ask ChatGPT a physics question, then a music question, then to draw — it never says 'sorry, not my department.'" Consequence: with deep knowledge on tap, the valuable human skill flips from going DEEP in one box to CONNECTING boxes — every session this weekend lives at a crossing (AI = math+language+art; soft robots = engineering+biology+design; world models = physics+imagination). Fractal photos: "nature never took our departments seriously — a vegetable does geometry, a river draws a tree."

…and a deeper reason

The more machines can do, the more whole YOU need to be

⚖️ Someone must decide what AI should do. That takes science AND art AND heart
🧭 Good judgment, kindness, big questions — no machine can do that for you
❤️ You are not one skill. AI is your instrument — not your rival 🎻

Don't just use AI — steer it. And steering takes ALL of you.

[17:10–19:00 | ~2 min] — reunification reason #2: the ETHICAL & PSYCHOLOGICAL one. Drop the energy, get sincere — this is the values beat of the talk. ETHICAL: AI now touches everything — health, art, jobs, what you see online. Steering it well can't be left to people who know only code, or only philosophy; it needs people fluent across boundaries. "The person who decides what a music-making AI should do had better understand BOTH music AND machines." PSYCHOLOGICAL: a kid whose whole identity is one skill feels threatened when AI does that skill ("it draws better than me — why bother?"). Wrong lesson. If you're a whole person — curious across many things — AI isn't a rival, it's an instrument. Your worth was never one box. This is the real answer to the anxious question they've all heard: "will AI take my job?" — narrow cogs get replaced; whole humans get amplified.

One more secret — about HOW you'll learn

Learning uses ALL your senses

👀 See it — watch ideas move in live demos & games
✋ Touch it — build a soft robot with your own hands
👂 Hear it — math played as music, physics as sound
👃 Even smell it — smells stick in memory like glue!

Plato knew: his school wasn't a classroom — it was a garden 🌿

That's why these two days are hands-on: eyes + hands + ears beat a screen.

[19:00–20:30 | ~1.5 min] — the "how" beat: multi-sensory learning. The brain science, kid-sized: every sense you add builds MORE connections to the same idea — more roads to the memory, the stickier it gets. Smell is the sneaky one: it's wired almost directly into the brain's memory center, which is why one scent can teleport you to a place from years ago. Ask: "ever smelled something and instantly remembered a whole place?" — hands will go up. Map it to the weekend: SEE (visualization games, live demos), TOUCH (this afternoon's soft-robot build — squishy silicone in your hands), HEAR (Pythagoras' string, the music session, physics of sound), SMELL (the silicone lab really does have a smell — that memory is free). Closes the Plato frame: the Academy was literally a garden — all-senses learning is not a new trick, it's the original one.

The adventure · Day 1 (today)

Today — big ideas and hands-on, woven all day

9:30 · What is AI? — big ideas + live demos
10:30 · 🔬 Train Your First AI — hands-on ML lab
1:00 · 💬 How does ChatGPT work? — Generative AI & LLMs
2:00 · 🤖 Soft Robotics — design & build by hand
3:30 · 🎵 Science & Music — guest pianists + the physics of sound
4:30 · 🚀 Project Kickoff — pick your team & your idea

The adventure · Day 2 (tomorrow)

Tomorrow — two more big ideas, then build it & show it

9:00 · 📈 Physics Simulation — modeling the real world
9:45 · 🌀 AI World Models — can AI imagine the future?
10:45 · 🛠️ Project Build & Test — make your idea real (TAs at your side)
1:00 · 🏆 Student Showcase — YOU present what you built
2:00 · 🎓 Certificates, awards & group photo

The finale — this is the point

🏆 EVERYONE showcases a project

Team up! Groups of 2–4 make the best projects. Then pick ANY of these:

🤖 Show your soft robot — photos, video, or the squishy thing itself
🕹️ Invent a web game with our AI game-builder — any idea or concept you love, live in the Student Arcade for everyone to play
🧠 Any small AI project you're curious about — outside tools & resources welcome
✨ Or mix them — the best projects cross the walls

students building at the 2025 workshop — last year's builders at work…

student assembling a robot at the 2025 workshop — …this is you tomorrow

Tomorrow at 1:00 the stage is YOURS — and everyone earns an SDSU certificate 🎓

[23:00–24:30 | ~1.5 min] This is what they'll remember — sell it warmly, not as pressure. "You don't need it perfect. You need it YOURS. The showcase is show-and-tell, not a final exam." PUSH THE TEAM-UP hard: solo is allowed, but teams of 2–4 are the goal — "find people whose skills are NOT yours: a builder, a talker, an artist." Teams form at today's 4:30 kickoff — "start dreaming NOW; steal ideas from every session today." The three tracks, concretely: (1) soft-robot show-and-tell — photos or video of your build are plenty, no need to carry the robot; (2) invent a game with our AI game-builder — describe any idea in one sentence and it becomes a playable web game in the Student Arcade (lowest floor, highest ceiling — everyone can do this one); (3) a free-choice small AI project — outside tools and resources are absolutely allowed (Teachable Machine, ChatGPT, home laptops…). Certificates + group photo right after — families welcome for the showcase hour. Callback to the senses slide: "the best projects you can see, touch, AND hear."

Your turn — everyone introduces themselves 🎤

Tell us about YOU

1️⃣ Your name
2️⃣ Your interest — what do you love learning?
3️⃣ Your hobby — what do you do for fun? 🎮🎨⚽🎹
4️⃣ Why are you here?

No wrong answers — and see how many of you don't fit in one box 😉

Last thing before we start — house rules 📋

Keep it fun, keep it safe

RULE #1: Don't understand? Have a question? You ASK ✋ — that's not a suggestion, it's the rule. No dumb questions exist · TAs in red are here for YOU
🚸 Stay with the group — no wandering the building or campus alone; take a buddy for restroom trips
🧪 Soft-robot lab: follow instructions, gloves on, materials away from mouth & eyes — tell us about any allergies NOW or anytime
🚨 Alarm or emergency: stay calm, follow staff to the exits · feeling unwell or lost → nearest staff/TA immediately
🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Under 18: you're signed out only to your parent/guardian at day's end
🍎 Food & drinks outside the classroom · lunch & snacks provided · Wi-Fi: SDSU_Guest
📸 We'll take photos for the program — wave, smile, or photobomb responsibly 😄 · phones down during sessions (unless it's game time)

[27:30–29:00 | ~1.5 min] RULE #1 is the one to drill: asking is not optional here — if you're lost or curious, you raise your hand, period. Make the room say it back: "If you don't understand, you…?" — "ASK!" (do it twice, louder the second time). Explain WHY it's a rule: "in this room, sitting quietly confused is the only way to fail — and one person's question usually rescues five other people who were stuck on the same thing." Keep the tone light — "the fun kind of rules" — but hit every safety beat clearly: • Supervision: students stay with the group at all times; buddy system for anything outside the room; TAs in red are the go-to for EVERYTHING. • Lab safety (this afternoon's soft-robot build): the silicone is skin-safe but follow instructions exactly, wear the gloves provided, keep materials away from face/mouth/eyes, wash hands after. Ask about allergies before the session starts. • Emergency: if an alarm sounds, stop and follow staff calmly to the exits and the assembly point outside (point to the exits in the real room). Any injury or feeling unwell → any staff member immediately; first aid is at the check-in desk. • Pickup: under-18s are signed out ONLY to a parent/guardian. If your ride is late, wait with staff — never outside alone. • Photos: we photograph for the program — if any family opted out on the release form, quietly flag those students to the photographer. EDIT for the real room before presenting: restroom directions, exact exits, games-hub QR. End on the values line: "It's OK to fail — that's literally how AI learns. Curiosity, courage, collaboration."

For two days, there are no
"math kids" or "art kids."

Just curious people — the way it was in Plato's garden.
Let's build the future together. 🤖🔬🎵🚀