Shashank Sonkar

Biography

Shashank Sonkar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Central Florida and a faculty member at the UCF Institute of Artificial Intelligence. His research focuses on understanding and advancing AI reasoning capabilities and computational modeling of human cognition. This research transforms personalization technologies across multiple fields, with education being a critical domain where these systems can identify knowledge gaps and deliver contextually appropriate guidance to learners at scale.

Prior to joining UCF, Shashank completed his PhD at Rice University, advised by Richard Baraniuk. He collaborated closely with OpenStax and SafeInsights, contributing to scalable AI systems for education research. His work spans pedagogical alignment of large language models (e.g., CLASS framework, code soliloquies), cognitive modeling of student reasoning (e.g., qDKT, DUPE, MalAlgoQA), and intelligent assessment (e.g., ALAG, Marking). These tools are already being piloted in real classrooms at Rice University, showcasing their real-world impact.

His research has been published at top venues including EMNLP, AIED, EDM, COLING, and LAK. Before academia, he worked at Media.net on NLP and reinforcement learning systems for contextual advertising. He holds a B.Tech. in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.