UVU to Host AI Agent Behavioral Science Conference on January 30

UVU hosts a free AI Agent Behavioral Science Conference examining real-world use, research, and ethics of AI agents, featuring a healthcare informatics keynote, January 30.

Mark Tullis

Jan 23, 2026 - 2 min read

Orem, Utah — January 23, 2026

Utah Valley University will host the AI Agent Behavioral Science Conference on January 30, 2026, bringing together researchers, developers, educators, and industry professionals to examine how AI agents are shaping human behavior, decision-making, and real-world systems.

The free, half-day conference runs from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. in the Clark Building, Room 510, and focuses on the growing role of AI agents across work, research, and society.

“Today, AI is rapidly and dramatically impacting every area of our lives, and most especially our work,” said Tyler Small, Sr. Director of UVU's Kahlert Applied AI Institute. “Preparing faculty and students to work with AI agents is a top priority for UVU. This conference highlights that effort and represents many other internal initiatives and external partnerships that enable our people to develop AI and deploy agents responsibly.”

The event is organized around two breakout strands:

Applied Strand: How Are People Using AI Agents?
This track explores real-world deployments of AI agents, focusing on design decisions, practical use cases, and lessons learned. Sessions will examine how agents function as tools, collaborators, and decision-makers—and how human behavior shifts when they do.
Research, Philosophical, and Theoretical Strand: How Do We Study AI Agents?
This strand takes a deeper look at how AI agents are studied and evaluated, covering topics such as agent behavior modeling, human-agent interaction, ethics, emergent behavior, and interdisciplinary research methods.

Tamara Moores Todd, MD, Chief Health Informatics Officer; Vice President for Digital Technology Services, Intermountain Health

The conference keynote will be delivered by Tamara Moores Todd, MD, Chief Health Informatics Officer and Vice President for Digital Technology Services at Intermountain Health, and an attending physician with Utah Emergency Physicians. Her talk will focus on designing and deploying AI-driven systems responsibly in complex, high-stakes, human-centered environments.

Refreshments will be provided.

The conference is open to anyone building AI agents, studying human or social behavior, or interested in how intelligent systems interact with people and with each other.

Registration is free.