Samita Helsin Selected to Inaugural Class of the CAA’s Allied AI Collaborative Ambassadors
Samita Heslin, clinical assistant professor of emergency medicine in the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, has been named to the inaugural cohort of the Allied AI Collaborative Ambassadors for the 2026-27 academic year.
Heslin was one of 14 ambassadors announced by the Coastal Athletic Association (CAA) Academic Alliance on October 21.
The Allied AI Collaborative brings CAA Academic Alliance institutions together as a virtual community of learning focused on three priorities: research and innovation; teaching, learning, and assessment; and ethical and policy considerations. The 14 ambassadors will facilitate the collaborative’s meetings, delivering presentations, disseminating scholarship, mentoring new members and shaping the year’s focus areas.
The Allied AI Collaborative forms the Alliance’s comprehensive, cross-cutting portfolio of programmatic and research initiatives to advance responsible, innovative and collaborative applications of artificial intelligence technologies across all thirteen member institutions. By combining expertise and working together, Alliance institutions will accomplish more, and much more rapidly, than any
single institution could achieve individually, driving synergistic institutional transformation, and resulting in findings that can be disseminated widely.
In February, Heslin and Margaret Schedel — professor of music in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Music, core faculty member of the Institute for Advanced Computational Science and chair of the School of Communication and Journalism’s Department of Journalism — were selected by the CAA to help build a conference-wide network about AI-related best practices.
Heslin’s work integrates Stony Brook Medicine and the broader university campus, and demonstrates how responsible AI can be applied across clinical care, research and interdisciplinary education. She recently led an AI-enabled ambient documentation project in the emergency department to help with clinician workflow and documentation burden. She also leads the development of AI triage and AI-driven medication safety initiatives. These projects have brought together colleagues in clinical practice, biomedical informatics and computer science.
The CAA Academic Alliance was formed in 2002 to academically link the higher education institutions of the CAA. It serves a diverse audience across its member institutions: engaging faculty, staff, and students in meaningful initiatives that enrich the academic environment, advance student success and drive innovation and best practices in higher education.