Four researchers from Florida State University (FSU) School of Information (iSchool) attended the Southern Association for Information Systems (SAIS) 2026 Annual Conference, held March 13-14 in Asheville, North Carolina. The team included Dr. Subhasree Sengupta and doctoral students Yue (Luna) Liu, Ghazal Hussain, and Odirile Moja. Their work focuses on FSU’s growing impact in artificial intelligence (AI) and information systems research.

The SAIS conference is an opportunity for researchers to come together to share their work and advance the field of information systems. The FSU delegation presented four papers covering generative AI, privacy, human-computer interaction, and machine learning.

Dr. Sengupta, whose research focuses on human-AI interaction, had multiple co-authored papers at the conference, despite not being able to make the conference due to flight delays. One study, “GenAI Mediated Creation: Activity System in Multi-Dimensional Information Practice,” brought Sengupta and Liu together to examine how teams collaboratively use generative AI in creative projects. Liu attended the conference virtually, participating in discussions on digital literacy and responsible AI use.

“This is an incredible honor for us,” Sengupta said. “SAIS is a well-rounded community in the information sciences space, and the opportunity to share our work with this community and to discuss possible extensions and expansions with others working in the same space is very valuable, for which we are grateful.”

Additionally, Sengupta co-authored another study presented at the conference, “Analyzing Generative-AI Mediated Creation Using Activity Theory and Epistemic Network Analysis.” The research introduced a network-based approach to better understand how team dynamics, roles, and collective actions shape the way generative AI is used.

Hussain also presented at the conference with the study, “When Competitive Advantage Wins: A Privacy Calculus Perspective of Generative AI Use Among University Students.” Co-authored with Dr. Shuyuan Mary Ho and Sumra Anis from FSU, the study examines how university students weigh privacy concerns when using generative AI tools like ChatGPT and why they continue to use them despite awareness of potential privacy risks.

“This research highlights that students are not ignoring privacy concerns but rather balancing them with the practical benefits of AI tools,” Hussain said. “Understanding this balance will be important as AI becomes more integrated into education and everyday work.”

The iSchool’s Machine Learning Lab also made an impact at the conference as the co-authored paper, “Comparison of Authentic Media and Synthetic Media in Computer Vision Training,” won the conference’s Best Themed Paper Award.

“It was a great surprise,” doctoral student and co-author of the paper Odirile Moja said. “I actually defended the dissertation the morning that it was presented. The award speaks to the sort of importance this type of research has.”

The study explored how AI-generated, or synthetic, images can be used with or instead of real-world data to train computer vision models, with a focus on search-and-rescue operations. By simulating drowning victims in ocean environments, the research identified that there is not as much real-world data on those scenarios. This led to the findings that synthetic images could effectively train models to perform well in actual scenarios.

“Any paper being successful is always a sort of signal indicator that you should look further into it,” Moja said. “I’m deeply focused on the use of synthetic data, particularly in the domain of object detection, but there are different types of synthetic data that you can create.”

Building on this focus, he emphasized the growing significance of synthetic data in training AI models.

“I think that it’s going to become even more important in the coming years where we have such an abundance of models and only so much data to train them on,” Moja said. “So the use of synthetic data and quality synthetic data production techniques are going to become only even more important as the years go on.”

Together, Sengupta, Liu, Hussain, and Moja showcased FSU’s innovative AI research, addressed real-world challenges, and discussed responsible approaches in information systems.