About

I’m Mitch Gerhardt, a Ph.D. candidate in Engineering Education at Virginia Tech (expected 2027), completing a concurrent M.S. in Computer Science (expected 2026). I earned my B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech and worked as a software engineer at General Motors in Detroit, Michigan before returning to graduate school to study how people learn and develop expertise in technical work.

My research sits at the intersection of engineering education, generative AI (GenAI), and workplace learning. I study how GenAI is transforming the way engineering expertise is developed, displayed, recognized, and trusted — using ethnographic methods and frameworks from Science and Technology Studies (STS) to examine epistemic cultures and symbolic interactionism in technical settings. My current projects examine GenAI use in qualitative research methods, how STEM graduate students adopt and reason about GenAI tools, and how STEM instructors negotiate academic integrity amid widespread GenAI use in higher education.

Technically, I work across Python, JavaScript, React, and FastAPI, building NLP and LLM-based tools to support computational and mixed-methods qualitative research.

I’m based in Ithaca, NY, and affiliated with Virginia Tech’s Department of Engineering Education and Department of Computer Science. See my publications, talks, and CV for more, or get in touch if you’d like to connect.