{"slug": "ai-mediator-bridges-nu-boston-and-oakland-classrooms-in-real-time", "title": "AI Mediator bridges NU Boston and Oakland classrooms in real time", "summary": "Northeastern University professors demonstrated a custom-built AI mediator that synthesizes live classroom discussions between its Boston and Oakland campuses in real time, enabling students to visualize shared topics on a node map. The tool, developed by computational design professor Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo y Lopez, aims to create a searchable repository of in-house knowledge and was praised by President Joseph Aoun as a way to 'create learning without boundaries.'", "body_md": "# AI Mediator by Northeastern researchers bridges Boston and Oakland classrooms in real time\n\nA new AI tool developed by professors in the College of Arts and Media Design facilitates and synthesizes live discussions across Northeastern’s global campuses.\n\n“Hey Mediator, can you give us a summary of what the Oakland room has been talking about,” Northeastern Professor Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo y Lopez asked while participating in a discussion thousands of miles away on Northeastern’s Boston campus.\n\n“The room has been exploring the Zangbento temple of Benin through a virtual lidar/photogrammetry model, focusing on how heritage buildings change materials over time,” the mediator said in response, referring to the technology used to create 3D models of the structure.\n\nGarcia del Castillo y Lopez wasn’t speaking to a human note taker on the Oakland campus, but instead to a custom-built AI tool he helped design to facilitate better conversations between Northeastern’s global campuses. The goal of the project is to fundamentally upgrade the way Northeastern professors and their students interact with one another across space and time, creating a web of conversation transcripts between classrooms that act as an ever-evolving, searchable repository of knowledge.\n\nNortheastern doctoral students and moderator Killion Mokwete, a Northeastern professor of architecture, were engaged in a lively discussion in a studio in Shillman Hall on the Boston campus about the material choices used in the construction of a West African temple.\n\nOn the other side of the country, students at Northeastern’s Oakland campus were simultaneously engaged in a comparable chat. In the XR Lab, a [virtual reality and biometric-tracking space](https://oakland.northeastern.edu/research/xr-lab/) tucked away beside the Makerspaces, architecture professor Sarah Hirschman debated with electrical engineering PhD students Xuzhe Zhao and Zheyuan Sheng about the cultural consequences of using different building materials to construct sites of religious significance.\n\nRebuilding a temple with concrete that was originally wood might alter its spiritual atmosphere, Hirschman said, but the new structure will not erode or fall apart as quickly. Architectural design choices like this can therefore be seen as acts of cultural preservation, she added.\n\nAlthough they were thousands miles apart, the two Northeastern classrooms were communicating with each other through the AI mediator as part of a demo of Garcia del Castillo y Lopez’s AI technology.\n\nThe AI mediator picked up on the two conversations from microphones as students explored a three-dimensional version of the West African site. The chatbot then chose the most salient points from both conversations and transported those ideas to a two-dimensional node map that allowed students to visualize connection points between shared topics.\n\nTo President Joseph Aoun, who was present for the demonstration in Boston, the technology helps “create learning without boundaries,” he said. He added that the technology was only part of what made the demonstration and concept “terrific.”\n\n“It’s the way our community is thinking about harnessing AI to enhance research and thinking,” he said.\n\nThe invention was largely the brainchild of Garcia del Castillo y Lopez, a computational design professor in the College of Arts and Media Studies. One of the major goals of the AI mediation project is for students and faculty members across Northeastern’s campus network to better collaborate on shared ideas and projects, Garcia del Castillo y Lopez said.\n\nHe said this system has more advantages over a standard AI chatbot like Claude or ChatGPT because it is “situated in contextual knowledge,” meaning it is a repository for information that was collected in-house at Northeastern University.\n\n“Whether they are happening in real time or in the past, [the map] has all the topics in the database,” he told Northeastern Global News. “So, I can actively ask the AI model that is running all of this to give me perspectives from other rooms that are not mine.”\n\nHe added that the key is that “you’re using AI to parse through a large knowledge base of ideas that have been exposed by real humans in a real conversation.” And this is important because it means that, in the moment, students and professors can keep their focus on the discussion at hand without worrying about scribbling down notes or reading lengthy transcripts from other classrooms to find the connection points.\n\n## Editor’s Picks\n\nThe idea for the project came while Garcia Del Castillo y Lopez was on a walk around campus this past spring with Ben Knapp, dean of Northeastern’s [College of Arts, Media and Design](https://news.northeastern.edu/2025/07/30/benjamin-knapp-dean-camd/). Knapp spoke about his desire to better connect with the university’s global campus network using digital twin software, which creates physical environments in digital spaces, and artificial intelligence.\n\nGarcia del Castillo y Lopez said he convinced Knapp that the concept was “pretty straightforward.” So Garcia del Castillo y Lopez put together a task force over the summer to develop a prototype of the technology in action.\n\nThe College of Arts and Media Design has big plans for the technology, explained Victor Zappi, a music professor in CAMD who helped Garcia del Castillo y Lopez develop the AI mediator.\n\nUsing motion capture technology, which records people’s movements, the pair hope to make the AI chatbot aware of people’s body’s movements and mannerisms.\n\n“We want to make the feeling of being present higher between the two groups,” he said, referring to the Oakland and Boston classes on display during the demo.\n\nFor Garcia del Castillo y Lopez, the technology could help reorient how people should think about and use AI in conversation. In the not-too-distant future, this mediator could act as a helpful bridge between classrooms that would otherwise never have the chance to interact and learn from one another, he said.\n\n“Think of being in a conversation where AI is not telling you what to think, but it is helping connect you with what other people are thinking,” he said. “That’s the whole goal.”", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-mediator-bridges-nu-boston-and-oakland-classrooms-in-real-time", "canonical_source": "https://news.northeastern.edu/2026/09/01/ai-collaboration-network-boston-oakland/", "published_at": "2026-09-01 22:56:39+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-01 23:22:49.704634+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-tools", "ai-research"], "entities": ["Northeastern University", "Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo y Lopez", "Joseph Aoun", "Sarah Hirschman", "Killion Mokwete", "Xuzhe Zhao", "Zheyuan Sheng", "College of Arts and Media Design"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-mediator-bridges-nu-boston-and-oakland-classrooms-in-real-time", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-mediator-bridges-nu-boston-and-oakland-classrooms-in-real-time.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-mediator-bridges-nu-boston-and-oakland-classrooms-in-real-time.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-mediator-bridges-nu-boston-and-oakland-classrooms-in-real-time.jsonld"}}