Dr. Alvaro Ortiz

Dr. Ortiz’s work sits at the intersection CHaT investigates: how AI systems shape learning, judgment, and epistemic authority rather than simply automate tasks. As a mathematician, he brings a particular vantage point to this question: mathematics is the discipline most exposed to AI’s claims of computational authority, and most equipped to interrogate them, since verifying whether an AI-generated argument or solution is actually valid is itself a mathematical act. He has built that scrutiny into practice through Socratic AI tutors designed to withhold answers and preserve students’ own reasoning, and a traffic-light assignment framework that makes AI’s role in a given task explicit rather than ambient. Beyond his own classroom, he has worked to disseminate this AI literacy at scale: as Principal Investigator of UC-FAIR, a faculty development initiative that reached faculty across nine colleges, through invited workshops in Colombia and the United States, and through service on SIAM’s National Education Committee, where he helps shape how the applied mathematics community approaches AI in education nationally. He sees this dissemination work, translating a mathematician’s scrutiny of AI’s reliability into literacy others can use, as directly continuous with CHaT’s mission.