The focus of the seminar series is to call for experts related to academia and research in the areas related to biomechanics, variability, motor disorders, physical therapy, and related studies.

Presentation Title: Who Are We Writing For Now? Human Cognition, LLMs, and the Changing Ecology of Academic Writing

Presentation Abstract:

Academic writing is changing rapidly under large language models, but the transition is far less straightforward than either enthusiasm or anxiety suggests. Many researchers now use AI routinely, yet there remains substantial confusion about what these systems actually do well, how they differ from human cognition, and even whom academic prose is now being written for. Human readers, peer reviewers, editors, search systems, and AI-assisted readers do not process language in the same way, and writing optimized for one can become less effective for another. In this talk, I use ideas from ecological dynamics and established work on human cognition to develop a practical way of thinking about large language models. Rather than treating an LLM as an author, search engine, or disembodied intelligence, I frame human--LLM interaction as a coupled system in which useful reasoning and writing emerge through constraints, feedback, iteration, and complementary forms of variability. This perspective helps explain both the remarkable usefulness of LLMs and the characteristic failures that make much AI-assisted academic writing repetitive, overstructured, rhetorically inflated, or cognitively unnatural. I will draw on published work, observations from colleagues and peer review, and my own experience using LLMs in different capacities across approximately 60 academic papers. The goal is not to prescribe a single workflow, but to show how understanding the different affordances of human and machine cognition can make AI-assisted writing more rigorous, efficient, and intellectually satisfying while preserving authorship, judgment, and scientific responsibility.

About the speaker:

Madhur Mangalam is an accomplished Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomechanics at the University of Nebraska in Omaha. He has a stellar academic background, earning his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Life Sciences from the prestigious Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Pune, India. His insatiable curiosity and passion for understanding the human mind led him to complete his Ph.D. in Psychology at the renowned University of Georgia in Athens, followed by rigorous postdoctoral training in Neuroscience at Northeastern University in Boston.Dr. Mangalam's research pursuits are at the forefront of interdisciplinary innovation, primarily focusing on unraveling the nonlinear dynamical principles that underlie perception-action mechanisms and embodied/embedded cognition. His scholarly journey is marked by a commitment to advancing our understanding of these intricate processes. Furthermore, he is a pioneer in developing cutting-edge nonlinear analytical methods, which play a pivotal role in uncovering and deciphering these fundamental principles. With his exceptional academic journey and dedication to pushing the boundaries of knowledge, Dr. Mangalam continues to make impactful contributions to biomechanics, psychology, and neuroscience.