We’re diving into the history of Alexandria, Virginia -- the future home of Virginia Tech's Innovation Campus -- with a discussion between two experts who are sure to engage us in a lively tour of local Black history in the Civil War era enhanced by the possibilities and perspective of photo sleuthing with artificial intelligence.

Experts:
John T. Chapman was elected to Alexandria City Council in 2012, 2015 and 2018, and ceremonially serves as the city’s Night Mayor. Professionally, Chapman is a career educator and currently works for Fairfax County Public Schools. Chapman was born and raised in Alexandria and is the founder of Manumission Tour Company, which provides curated heritage tours focusing on the stories of early African Americans in Alexandria.

Dr. Kurt Luther is an associate professor of computer science at Virginia Tech, based in the Washington, D.C. area. He directs the Crowd Intelligence Lab, researching how the complementary strengths of crowdsourced human intelligence and artificial intelligence (AI) can help people make sense of complex data.
Since 2015, he has written a quarterly column on Civil War photo sleuthing for Military Images Magazine and is the project director for Civil War Photo Sleuths.



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