Let's Talk About AI

• Event Date: Wednesday, March 25, 2026
• Time: 4:30 pm–6:00 pm (CDT)
• Location: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL

• Talk

Join Spurlock Museum, SkAI, and University of Illinois faculty in a discussion exploring the use of AI. Topics to be explored will be arts and humanities, science, and ethics.

Speaker Information

Nicolás Yunes is a Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign and Founding Director of the Illinois Center for Advanced Studies of the Universe. He is also the Director of the newly established Simons Collaboration on Black Holes and Strong Gravity, an international effort aimed at understanding what the most extreme objects in the universe can reveal about the nature of space, time, and physical law. Yunes’ work sits at the boundary between theory, observation, and interpretation: using gravitational waves and black holes as empirical probes of ideas that were once purely mathematical or philosophical. He is an elected Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation, and a recipient of the NASA Einstein Fellowship. Yunes is also the co-author of two books: the popular-science book Is Einstein Still Right? (with Clifford Will) and the graduate-level textbook Gravitational Waves in Physics and Astrophysics (with Cole Miller).

Patrick Earl Hammie is a visual artist, James Avery Endowed Professor, and Chair of Studio Art at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, where he serves as the, and as the inaugural Director’s Fellow in the School of Art & Design. His practice spans painting, installation, and digital media, exploring Black identity, cultural memory, and speculative imagination, and reclaiming the Black body as a site of inheritance, resistance, and futurity. Hammie’s work has been exhibited internationally and across the United States, and is held in collections including the David C. Driskell Center, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, and the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection. He has received support from the Mellon Foundation, National Science Foundation, Joyce Foundation, and Puffin Foundation, and has held residencies at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center and Millay Arts. His recent curatorial work In Blackest Shade, In Darkest Light, a national traveling exhibition reimagining drawing as a form of Black world-building, opens at The Sheldon Concert Hall and Art Galleries in St. Louis on September 10.

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  Patrick Earl Hammie

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  Nicolás Yunes