Dr. Esmaeili is an Assistant Professor of Practice in Applied AI in the School of Applied and Creative Computing at Purdue University. Before joining Purdue, he was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science in the School of Computing at Wichita State University. He earned his Ph.D. from Purdue's Department of Computer and Information Technology, making his return to Purdue a meaningful full-circle moment.
His research centers on distributed artificial intelligence - building AI systems that learn, reason, and collaborate across multiple autonomous entities rather than depending on a single centralized system. This work sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and multi-agent systems, and spans several interconnected threads: how autonomous agents coordinate, communicate, and make collective decisions even when they differ in capability or reliability; how machine learning models can be trained across distributed nodes or devices without centralizing data or computation; how independent agents can learn from one another by sharing knowledge and insights rather than relying on a central coordinator; and how holonic and hierarchical architectures can organize complex systems into autonomous yet cooperative components. Together, these threads reflect his broader goal of advancing AI systems that are more decentralized, adaptive, and scalable.
At Purdue, Dr. Esmaeili teaches courses in applied AI and computing, including AI Fundamentals and Mobile Programming, with prior teaching experience spanning AI agents, deep learning, machine learning, and algorithm design and analysis. His approach emphasizes both conceptual grounding and practical application, helping students understand not just how AI technologies work, but how to design and apply them to real-world problems.
Beyond teaching and research, Dr. Esmaeili supports the broader academic community through conference organizing, program committee service, and peer review for scholarly journals and conferences. He is an active member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).