David Williamson Shaffer

David Williamson Shaffer is the Ada Lovelace Professor of AI and Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Director of the Center for Research on Complex Thinking, and a Data Philosopher at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

Professor Shaffer's work looks at the impact of computers and AI on thinking, on learning, and on the methods we use to understand thinking and learning.

Before coming to the University of Wisconsin, Professor Shaffer taught grades 4-12 in the United States and abroad, including two years working with the US Peace Corps in Nepal. His M.S. and Ph.D. are from the Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Shaffer was a 2008-2009 European Union Marie Curie Fellow and is a Fellow in the International Society for Learning Sciences, a Member of the National Academy of Education, a Board Member of the International Society for Quantitative Ethnography, and the Founding Editor of the Journal of Quantitative Ethnography.

His non-academic interests include sailing, pickleball, and doing physical therapy for the injuries he sustains from sailing and playing pickleball.