IDL Researchers Present AI Readiness Research at Gateways 2026; Mahedi Hasan Wins Best Student-Led Poster
Updated: 4 hours ago
Two IDL researchers presented their work on artificial intelligence and science gateways at Gateways 2026, hosted by Johns Hopkins University at the JHU Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C., September 23–25. Mahedi Hasan, IDL Student Lead and a Ph.D. candidate in Media & Communication at Texas Tech University, won the Best Student-Led Poster Award. Md Ashraful Goni, an IDL alumnus and former Student Lead, presented a paper that was a finalist for Best Paper. The conference committee selected both researchers for NSF travel funding to attend and speak.
Mahedi's poster, "AI Readiness as a Community Accomplishment: Communities of Practice and Sustainable Science Gateways," is based on preliminary findings from his dissertation. It draws on 26 interviews, 11 days of vessel fieldwork, and about 80 pages of fieldnotes to ask how shared cyberinfrastructure communities define, test, and sustain readiness for AI-related change. It reports three findings: readiness is co-defined with users instead of prescribed, adoption travels through trust and small trials, and readiness is rehearsed and distributed across a community through hands-on practice and cross-training. As one interviewee put it, "One person is a point of failure." The poster's takeaway is that community-building is infrastructure.
The poster was co-authored by Mahedi Hasan, Kerk F. Kee, Kulsawasd Jitkajornwanich, Melissa Santillana, and Jon McNaughtan of Texas Tech University, and Ewa Deelman of the University of Southern California.
Ashraful's paper, "Is Your Science Gateway Ready for the AI Age? Communication Strategies for Sustainable Adoption and Diffusion for Science Gateways," was co-authored with Kulsawasd Jitkajornwanich, Prasad Calyam, and Kerk F. Kee.
Science gateways are web-based platforms that give researchers access to high-performance computing, large datasets, and specialized instruments without requiring them to manage the underlying infrastructure. The Gateways conference is organized by SGX3, the NSF-funded Science Gateways Center of Excellence, and this year marked ten years of the series. IDL's work on the sustainable implementation and diffusion of cyberinfrastructure is part of this community.
Congratulations to Mahedi, Ashraful, and all of the authors!
Mahedi's poster was supported by NSF CI Compass Award No. 2127548, and the 2025 Regents Professors Small Grant Program at Texas Tech University.
Citations
Hasan, M., Kee, K. F., Deelman, E., Santillana, M., Jitkajornwanich, K., & McNaughtan, J. (2026, September 23–25). AI readiness as a community accomplishment: Communities of practice and sustainable science gateways [Poster presentation]. Gateways 2026 Conference, Washington, DC, United States.
Goni, M. A., Jitkajornwanich, K., Calyam, P., & Kee, K. F. (2026). Is your science gateway ready for the AI age? Communication strategies for sustainable adoption and diffusion for science gateways [Conference presentation]. Science Gateways 2026, Washington, DC, United States.
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