Jesse Roberts
Assistant Professor, Tennessee Tech University
Interests
Deep learning fundamentals · Large language models · Cherokee language NLP · Spiking neural networks · Tornado detection · Computational linguistics, machine cognition, robotics
Education
Vanderbilt University
2019-2024
Ph.D. Computer Science
- Dissertation Topic: “A Theoretical & Empirical Analysis of Language Model Behavior”
- Advisor: Doug Fisher
Tennessee Technological University
2014-2017
M.S. Electrical Engineering
- Thesis Topic: Machine Learning Improvement of Solar MPPT
2011-2014
B.S. Electrical Engineering
Faculty Experience
Tennessee Technological University
2024-Current
Assistant Professor
CSC 4320 (F2025) - Computer Architecture
CSC 2220 (F2025) - Artificial Intelligence for Everyone
CSC 4220/5220 (S2025) - Data Mining and ML
CSC 7970 (F2024 - F2025) - LLM Seminar
- Developed a course on LLMs. Surveys the important breakthroughs which have led to the emergence of large language models, their capabilities, and critical improvements.
AI 4200/5200 (S2025) - Deep Learning
- Developed the deep learning theory and practical course, the first AI prefix course at TnTech for the BS in AI program.
Tennessee Technological University
2021-2024
Lecturer
ECE 3270 (S2020 - S2024) - PLC Lecture & Lab
- Developed OER lab manuals for teaching beginner PLC programming, emphasizing good coding practices.
ECE 4961 & 4971 (F2021 - S2024) - Capstone Design I and II
- Complete redevelopment of curriculum to facilitate assessment and sustainability.
ECE 3540 (F2023 - S2024) - Physical Electronics
Vanderbilt University
2020-2020
Instructor
CS 1101 (Su2020) - Programming and Problem Solving (Java Based)
Consulting
Cumberland Gradient, Founder, Cookeville, Tennessee
Phoenix Rural Health
2024 - Present
AI strategy consulting.
Wilson Sports
2025 - 2026
Conducted full survey of the production process and analyzed it for automation and artificial intelligence opportunities. Developed a plan for retooling for the inclusion of automation and AI.
ATC Automation
2024
Software development guidance and consulting for automation in the Siemens PLC platform.
Industry Experience
ATC Automation, Cookeville, Tennessee
Senior Controls Engineer
2014 - 2021
Designed, oversaw build, and programmed automation equipment to meet customer requirements and exceed expectations while maintaining profitability. Total value of projects oversaw in excess of 20 million dollars.
Co-op Program Manager
2018 - 2020
Developed a co-op program to improve recruitment. Oversaw hiring, training, and management of co-op employees. Acted as the liaison for the building and maintenance of industrial/academic relations. Obtained a $100K industry lab grant.
Grants
2025
ERI: Data-Driven Expansion of Electrified Transportation Network
- National Science Foundation · Award #2347337 · $195,769 · PI: Jesse Roberts
2025
Collaborative Research: Conference: NAIRR Pilot Expansion: FA1: Mid-South Conferences on CyberInfrastructure Advances to Enable Interdisciplinary AI Research in Health (TN-THRIVE)
- National Science Foundation · Award #2526362 · $125,133 · PI: Anthony Skjellum · Co-PIs: Jesse Roberts, Amr Hilal · tnthrive.ai
S2024
IEEE AESS Grant for the DARPA Triage Challenge
- IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society
F2023
TnTech OER Development Grant
- Tennessee Tech University
Awards and Honors
Fellowships
2027
CORE Institute Fellow for Indigenous Language Revitalization
- CORE Institute
Tennessee Technological University
2026
Wings Up 100 Award
Research Contract with Wilson Sports
ICML Silver Award for Excellence in Reviewing
Nominated for best paper at IJCNN
S2024
Nominated for the KEEN Foundation Rising Star Award
F2018
Vanderbilt Carnegie Fellowship
Vanderbilt University
Su2024
Received the Vanderbilt Award for Doctoral Discovery
S2024
Nominated for the CF Chen best paper award
S2021
Nominated for the Graduate Leadership Anchor Award
F2021
Received the American Bureau of Shipping merit Scholarship
Media Appearances
F2021
Interviewed on the radio about capstone project that leveraged ML to monitor parking lots.
S2025
Herold Citizen article regarding work to use large language models to preserve the Cherokee language: Article
S2025
104.7 Radio Interview regarding Cherokee preservation with AI
S2025
WBIR channel 10 Interview regarding Cherokee preservation with AI: Article
S2025
News channel 5 Nashville Interview with Forest Sanders regarding Cherokee preservation with AI Article
F2025
Interviewed by the Knoxville ledger regarding Cherokee preservation with AI: Article
Workshop Organization and Teaching
S2025
Classes without quizzes at TnTech CS - How do Language models work?
S2025
TnTech College of Engineering CAFE Workshop - Using LLMs in Research
Publications
2026
- A Werth, G Hahn, R Borges Hink, E Piesciorovsky, SJ Prowell, ... “Augmenting LLM-Based Agents for Improved Performance in Pentesting and Commissioning Operational Technology in Critical Infrastructure.” Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States), 2026.
- H Sawyer, J Roberts, S Matei. “Calibrating Urban Traffic Simulation from Sparse Road Observations via Genetic Optimization.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2606.03823, 2026.
- M Rentschler, J Roberts. “Exploitation Is All You Need… for Exploration.” 2026 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), 1-6, 2026. Cited by 5.
- T Lee, M Ismail, J Roberts. “Generation and Validation of Configuration Management Code for Cyber Range Environments Using Large Language Models.” The International FLAIRS Conference Proceedings 39 (1), 2026.
- K Moore, J Roberts, D Watson, W Ward, G Heyboer. “Human-Alignment, Calibration, and Activation Patterns in Large Language Model Uncertainty.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.30675, 2026.
- K Moore, J Roberts, D Watson, P Wisniewski. “Investigating Human-Aligned Large Language Model Uncertainty.” The International FLAIRS Conference Proceedings 39 (1), 2026. Cited by 3.
- J Scott, J Roberts. “KARMA: Karma-Aligned Reward Model Adaptation.” Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026, 48030 …, 2026. Cited by 1.
- K Rainey, J Roberts. “Leveraging BART to Assess CS1 C++ Programming Assignments using Rubric-based Criteria.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2606.03814, 2026.
- M Soare, A Elshazly, J Roberts, M Ismail. “Multimodal Language Model Vision Analysis for Leader Drone Identification in Adversarial Swarms.” IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 2026.
- M Rentschler, J Roberts. “Reinforcement learning from meta-evaluation: Aligning language models without ground-truth labels.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.21268, 2026. Cited by 5.
- J Scott, J Roberts. “Reward-Guided Fine-Tuning of Language Models with Social Feedback.” The International FLAIRS Conference Proceedings 39 (1), 2026. Cited by 1.
- J Brooks, J Roberts, P McCloud. “SAGE 0.2: LLMs for DOM Informed Internet Guidance.” The International FLAIRS Conference Proceedings 39 (1), 2026.
- D Ndayegamiye, J Roberts, B Frey. “Systematic Analysis of Tokenization Properties in Low-Resource Polysynthetic NMT.” The International FLAIRS Conference Proceedings 39 (1), 2026.
- F Doane, J Roberts. “When Prediction Isn’t Enough: Decision-Criteria-Informed Learning for Threshold-Based Decisions.” 2026 25th International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications …, 2026.
2025
- H Sawyer, J Roberts, K Moore. “Basic Categories in Vision Language Models: Expert Prompting Doesn’t Grant Expertise.” Twelfth Annual Conference on Advances in Cognitive Systems 2025, 177, 2025.
- J Roberts, K Moore, D Fisher. “Do Large Language Models Learn Human-Like Strategic Preferences?” Proceedings of the 1st Workshop for Research on Agent Language Models (REALM …, 2025. Cited by 11.
- S Hadlock, J Roberts, J Lee. “Enhancing Post Earnings Announcement Drift Measurement with Large Language Models.” Proceedings of The 10th Workshop on Financial Technology and Natural …, 2025. Cited by 1.
- L Roberts, J Roberts. “Harnessing the Power of AI in Honors: Equipping Students to Leverage Tools Effectively.” Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council 26 (1), 51-59, 2025.
- SMM Hossain, A Altarawneh, J Roberts. “Leveraging large language models and machine learning for smart contract vulnerability detection.” 2025 IEEE 15th Annual Computing and Communication Workshop and Conference …, 2025. Cited by 24.
- YR Matinez, J Roberts. “LLMs as Agentic Cooperative Players in Multiplayer UNO.” International Conference on Machine Learning Applications 2025, 2025.
- M Rentschler, J Roberts. “RL+ Transformer= A General-Purpose Problem Solver.” Proceedings of the 1st Workshop for Research on Agent Language Models (REALM …, 2025. Cited by 3.
- W Eberle, A Hilal, A MacKenzie, J Roberts, A Skjellum, D Talbert. “Tennessee Tech University: Action Plan for Artificial Intelligence Education, Workforce Development, Research, and Infrastructure Needs.” 2025.
- E Brown, J Roberts, D Talbert. “Toward the Use of LLMs to Support Curriculum Mapping to Established Frameworks.” American Society of Engineering Education, 2025. Cited by 3.
2024
- JTN Roberts. “A Theoretical & Empirical Analysis of Transformer Language Model Behavior.” 2024. Cited by 1.
- K Moore, J Roberts, T Pham, D Fisher. “Chain of thought still thinks fast: Apricot helps with thinking slow.” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 47, 2024. Cited by 14.
- J Roberts. “Do Large Language Models Learn to Human-Like Learn?” Proceedings of the AAAI 2024 Spring Symposium Series 3 (1), 588-591, 2024. Cited by 2.
- R Umphrey, J Roberts, L Roberts. “Investigating Expert-in-the-Loop LLM Discourse Patterns for Ancient Intertextual Analysis.” 4th International Conference on Natural Language Processing for Digital …, 2024. Cited by 14.
- J Roberts, K Moore, T Pham, O Ewaleifoh, D Fisher. “Large language model recall uncertainty is modulated by the fan effect.” 28th Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning, 303–313, 2024. Cited by 9.
- J Roberts, L Roberts, A Reed. “Supporting the digital autonomy of elders through llm assistance.” Proceedings of the AAAI Symposium Series 4 (1), 182-186, 2024. Cited by 7.
- K Moore, J Roberts, T Pham, O Ewaleifoh, D Fisher. “The base-rate effect on llm benchmark performance: Disambiguating test-taking strategies from benchmark performance.” Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2024, 2283–2288, 2024. Cited by 10.
- J Roberts, K Moore, D Wilenzick, D Fisher. “Using artificial populations to study psychological phenomena in neural models.” Proceedings of the aaai conference on artificial intelligence 38 (17), 18906 …, 2024. Cited by 10.
2023
- J Roberts. “How Powerful are Decoder-Only Transformer Neural Models?” 2024 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), 1--8, 2023. Cited by 68.
2021
- J Roberts. “Finding an Equilibrium in the Traveler's Dilemma with Fuzzy Weak Domination.” 2021 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG), 1-5, 2021. Cited by 1. Nominated for best paper.
2020
- J Roberts, DH Fisher. “Extending the Philosophy of Computational Criticism.” ICCC, 358-361, 2020. Cited by 1.
- J Roberts, D Fisher. “pReview: The artificially intelligent conference reviewer.” 2020 19th IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications …, 2020. Cited by 7.
2019
- J Roberts, DA Talbert. “Biologically Extending the Gen 2 ANN Model.” FLAIRS, 132-135, 2019.
2017
- J Roberts, I Bhattacharya. “Improving any arbitrary MPPT hill climber with ANN estimations.” 2017 IEEE 44th Photovoltaic Specialist Conference (PVSC), 3083-3087, 2017. Cited by 2.
- JT Roberts. “MNFIS+; or, a Better Hybrid Heuristic Maximum Power Point Tracker.” Tennessee Technological University, 2017.
2016
- J Roberts, I Bhattacharya. “MNFIS and other soft computing based MPPT techniques: A comparative analysis.” 2016 IEEE 43rd Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 3247-3251, 2016. Cited by 4.
From Google Scholar, November 11, 2026.
Presentations
Invited Talks
October 2026
How Generative AI Really Works. Chattanooga State Community College. Slides
April 2026
Foundation Models and Responsible AI. TN-THRIVE-AI.
November 2024
Artificial Intelligence: All Hype or a Revolution? Maryville College.
Conference Presentations
November 2026
Upcoming talk on AI. National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) Annual Conference, New Orleans, LA.
February 2026
When Artificial Code Mirrors God’s Image: Toward a Post-Anthropocentric Imago Dei. Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture, “Technology and the Human Person in the Age of AI,” Waco, TX.
May 2025
A Few-Shot Learning Method for SMS Phishing Detection and Explanation Using SLMs (poster). IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P), San Francisco, CA.
Seyed Mohammad Sanjari, Jesse Roberts, Mir Mehedi A. Pritom
Professional Memberships
2023 - Current
The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
2024 - Current
Association of Computational Linguistics (ACL)
2021 - Current
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
2024 - Current
Computational Intelligence Society (IEEE CIS)
Faculty Service
Tennessee Technological University
2026
AI Faculty Search Committee
Fall 2021 - Current
Undergraduate Program Committee
Spring 2022 - Current
ACME Building Design College Committee
Fall 2021 - Current
ABET Assessment Departmental Committee
Fall 2022 - Current
Founding Advisor to the Rock Climbing Club
Fall 2021 - Current
IEEE Robotics Team Coach
Research Service
April 2026
Organizer for the TN-THRIVE-AI Workshop
2026
Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP)
2024-2026
Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL)
2026
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML)
2026
Track Chair for Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Symposium (FLAIRS)
2025
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR)
2025 - 2026
12th Annual Conference on Advances in Cognitive Systems (ACS)
2025
Natural Language Processing for the Digital Humanities
2025
Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
2025
Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Symposium (FLAIRS)
2025
Association of Computational Linguistics (ACL)
2025
Behavioral Sciences Journal
2025
Research on Agent Language Models (REALM) at ACL
2024
Session Chair for World Congress on Computational Intelligence
2024
Natural Language Processing for the Digital Humanities
2024
EPJ Data Science Journal
2022-2025
International Joint Conference on Neural Networks
2022-2024
IEEE Conference on Games (AI & Game Theory)
Teaching Assistant Experience
Vanderbilt University
S2021
Project in Artificial Intelligence
F2020
Programming and Problem Solving (Java Based)
S2020
Compiler Construction
F2019
Database Management Systems
Research Assistant Experience
Vanderbilt University
Su2021
Researched computational sustainability
- Funded by NSF Grant No. 1521672
Graduate Courses Taken
Vanderbilt University
F2020
CS6388 - Model Integrated Computing
F2020
CS8395 - Neurodiversity Inspired Science & Engineering
S2020
CS6360 - Advanced Artificial Intelligence
S2020
CS5260 - Artificial Intelligence
F2019
CS6362 - Advanced Machine Learning
F2019
CS8395 - Computation & Cognition
Tennessee Technological University
F2018
CSC6903 - Learning Theory
S2018
CSC7980 - Stock Market Prediction Models
S2018
FIN6020 - Financial Management
F2017
CSC7240 - Intelligent Information Systems
F2016
CSC6903 - Advanced Reverse Engineering
F2016
ECE6580 - Instrument Transducer Technology
F2015
ECE6900 - Intelligent System Design
S2015
ECE6040 - Signal Analysis
S2015
ECE6250 - Random Signals & Systems
F2014
ECE6170 - High Performance Embedded System Design
F2014
ECE6200 - Linear Systems Analysis
F2014
ECE6600 - Computer Methods for Power System Analysis
Languages
- English (Native proficiency)
- Spanish (Elementary proficiency)
- Irish (Elementary proficiency)
Updated November 2026 · jessetnroberts.com/cv/