Leadership Examples in Tech Rarely Look Like Me
Jason Lucas with IST students at BLK Men in Tech THRIVE ConferenceStudent Spotlight
This powerful profile examines how Informatics PhD student Jason Lucas is using his experiences as an underrepresented student to drive both his research and his commitment to mentoring the next generation of tech leaders.
Key Highlights
The Power of Mentorship
- Mentoring philosophy rooted in guidance from Professor Emeritus Theodore Hollis
- Community engagement through educational programs using dance as a gateway
- Student support for undergraduates working on AI for social good and multilingual NLP
- Building independence while providing consistent advocacy and support
Navigating Representation Challenges
- Stark realities: Being one of the few Black men in his PhD program
- Conference experiences: Representing less than 1% of attendees at academic conferences
- Identity transition: From Grenada’s diverse environment to academia’s homogeneous spaces
- Finding community: Transformative experience at the BLK Men in Tech THRIVE Conference
Research with Purpose
- Addressing gaps: How current AI models fail to incorporate Black Afro-Caribbean perspectives
- Language inclusion: The absence of Caribbean vernacular and languages like Haitian Creole
- Community impact: How low-resource communities are disproportionately affected by tech manipulation
- Driving change: Using personal identity as motivation for more inclusive technology
Academic Impact
Current Research Focus
Lucas mentors undergraduate students on projects spanning:
- AI for social good applications
- Multilingual NLP research through the PIKE Research Lab
- Deepfake detection technologies
- Millennium Scholars program contributions
The PIKE Research Lab
The Penn State Information, Knowledge, and wEb (PIKE) group focuses on data management and mining across diverse forms, with particular attention to social and security applications—work that directly benefits from Lucas’s inclusive perspective.
Transformative Experiences
BLK Men in Tech THRIVE Conference 2024
Lucas describes this experience as “profound in two ways”:
- Community building: Bonding with IST’s Black undergraduate community as their chaperone
- Professional networking: Connecting with Black leadership in tech and renewing belief in his potential to excel
The conference highlighted both the community Lucas found and the research gaps his work addresses.
Philosophy in Action
“Having navigated challenges in my own educational journey, I find deep fulfillment in helping students discover their strengths and develop strategies to overcome obstacles. I understand firsthand how important tailored guidance can be, especially for students from underrepresented backgrounds or those facing additional challenges.”
Lucas’s approach focuses on building independence while ensuring students have reliable support, fostering both problem-solving skills and curiosity in the next generation of tech leaders.
Read the full profile to learn more about Jason Lucas’s journey, his research impact, and his vision for creating more inclusive technology that serves all communities.
I am a PhD candidate in Informatics in the College of IST at Penn State University, where I conduct research at the PIKE Research Lab under the guidance of Dr. Dongwon Lee. I specialize in AI/ML research focused on Information Integrity, Safe and Ethical AI, including combating harmful content across multiple languages and modalities. My research spans low-resource multilingual NLP, generative AI, and adversarial machine learning, with work extending across 79 languages. I have published 12 papers with 260+ citations in premier venues including ACL, EMNLP, IEEE, and NAACL.
My doctoral research focuses on bridging the digital language divide through transfer learning, classification (NLU), generation (NLG), adversarial attacks, and developing end-to-end AI pipelines using RAG and Agentic AI workflows for combating multilingual threats. Drawing from my Grenadian background and knowledge of local Creole languages, I bring a global perspective to AI challenges, working to democratize state-of-the-art AI capabilities for underserved linguistic communities worldwide. My mission is to develop robust multilingual multimodal systems and mitigate evolving security vulnerabilities while enhancing access to human language technology through cutting-edge solutions.
As an NSF LinDiv Fellow, I conduct transdisciplinary research advancing human-AI language interaction for social good. I actively mentor 5+ research interns and teach Applied Generative AI courses. Through industry experience at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Interaction LLC, and Coalfire, I bridge academic research with practical applications in combating evolving security threats and enhancing global AI accessibility. I see multilingual advances and interdisciplinary collaboration as a competitive advantage, not a communication challenge. Beyond research, I stay active through dance, fitness, martial arts, and community service.