Derek Koehl is an interdisciplinary scholar and educator whose work bridges psychology, history, artificial intelligence, and education. They currently serve as a lecturer in Interdisciplinary Studies at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), where they teach courses ranging from Interdisciplinary Research Methods and Artificial Intelligence in Human and Social Contexts to Imperial Rome and the Craft of History.
Koehl is a doctoral candidate in Applied Experimental Psychology at UAH, where their dissertation explores human perceptions of social intelligence in large language models. They hold multiple graduate degrees including an M.A. in Psychology, an M.A. in History, and an M.Ed. in Educational Technology. Their scholarly interests span human-AI teaming, trust in automation, experimental psychology, and the role of narratives in cultural transformation.
Prior to their current faculty role, Koehl served as a research associate in a UAH Earth System Science Center/NASA Marshall Space Flight Center research lab, contributing to advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence projects for federal and scientific agencies. Their contributions to Earth science knowledge graphs and AI natural language processing have been presented at prestigious venues such as the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, the American Geophysical Union, the European Geosciences Union, and the American Meteorological Society.
Koehl’s research has been published in journals and conferences including the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, and they are a co-developer of the Linguistic Fingerprint™, a technology for detecting latent constructs like trust in natural language. They are an award-winning presenter and recipient of the Charger Innovation Fund and the William Wessels Scholarship Award.