![\"Programme](\"https://www.epfl.ch/campus/art-culture/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/LES_CULTURELLES_1920x1080_programme_complet.png\")
\r\n\r\nGenerative AI has become a part of students' everyday working life. If used without guidance, GenAI can cause over-reliance and leave students with a distorted sense of what they have actually learned. Most research and practice have focused on how we can scaffold students' GenAI use, for example through prompts, guardrails, or redesigned tasks. This talk asks a simpler question that has received far less attention. When should students be allowed to use AI so that it helps their learning?
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\r\nIn this lunch&LEARN session, Janne Rotter turns to a question that's been largely overlooked: not how, but when should students be allowed to use AI for it to actually support learning? Janne will present findings from a study of 105 university students comparing three conditions: unrestricted AI access, no access at all, and a \"timed\" condition where students could only turn to AI after first attempting the task on their own.
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\r\nDrawing on multiple pedagogical theories to build a decision rule for when access should open up, the results show that students in the timed condition outperformed those with unrestricted access on an objective post-test, and had a more accurate sense of their own understanding, without an explicit metacognitive prompting. Compared to withholding AI entirely, timed access also seemed to reduce task errors and time spent on task.
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\r\nJoin us to learn more about the topic and engage in further discussion.
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Thesis Directors: Prof. M. Seidel, Dr T. Pieloni
\r\nPhysics doctoral program
\r\nThesis Nr. 11803
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\r\nTo take part in the public defense, please contact directly the speaker
\r\n\r\nDaniel G. Nocera is the Patterson Rockwood Professor of Energy at Harvard University. Nocera is recognized for his discoveries in renewable energy, originating new paradigms that have defined the field of solar energy conversion and storage. Nocera created the field of proton coupled electron transfer (PCET) at a mechanistic level by making the first measurements that temporally resolved the movement of an electron coupled to a proton. On this experimental foundation, he provided the first theory of PCET. With PCET as a guiding framework, he invented the Artificial Leaf and the Bionic Leaf. The Artificial Leaf comprises Si coated with catalysts to capture the direct solar process of photosynthesis – the use of sunlight to split water to hydrogen and oxygen from neutral water, at atmospheric pressure and room temperature. The Bionic Leaf-C comprises a bio-engineered organism interfaced with the catalysts of the Artificial Leaf to capture the dark process of photosynthesis – the combination of carbon dioxide and hydrogen to produce biomass and liquid fuels. The integration of the light and dark processes of the Artificial Leaf and the Bionic Leaf-C, respectively, allowed Nocera to develop a complete artificial photosynthesis — sunlight + air + water to biomass and liquid fuels. The Bionic Leaf-C is much more efficient than natural photosynthesis, exceeding the biomass efficiencies of natural photosynthesis by a factor of ×10 and biomass-to-fuels efficiencies by a factor of ×100. Extending this approach to the Bionic Leaf-N, Nocera has achieved a renewable and distributed Haber-Bosch synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen in air by coupling solar-based water splitting to a nitrogen and carbon fixing microorganism to produce a living biofertilizer, resulting in increased crop yields and early harvests. In the latest field trial for leafy vegetables (90% chemical replacement of urea ammonium nitrate), use of the biofertilizer on a 400-acre farm mitigated 153 metric tons of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere. Additionally, the Bionic Leaf-N as a living biofertilizer avoids nitrogen runoff and thus has an important future role in sustainable farming. These science discoveries set the stage for the large scale and distributed deployment of solar energy fuels and food production using only sunlight, air and any water source. With such simple natural inputs, these discoveries are particularly useful to the poor, where large infrastructures for fuel and food production are not tenable.
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\r\nNocera’s research contributions have been recognized by several awards, some of which include the Leigh Ann Conn Prize for Renewable Energy, Italgas Prize, IAPS Award, Burghausen Prize, the United Nation’s Science and Technology Award, Firenze Award in Molecular Sciences, F. A. Cotton Medal, Clarivate Citation Laureate and from the American Chemical Society the Inorganic Chemistry, Harrison Howe, Kosolapoff and Remsen Awards and the FA Cotton Medal. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Indian Academy of Sciences. He was named as 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time Magazine and was 11th on the New Statesman’s list on the same topic.
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