Job summary
Provides leadership for the University of Virginia Library as Dean of Libraries and University Librarian. Oversees strategy, operations, and services across all UVA Library locations. Serves as Special Advisor to the Provost on AI Literacy and Professor of Education by courtesy. Builds AI literacy frameworks and protocols that institutions across the United States and abroad have adopted.
Professional profile
Leo S. Lo studies how AI changes knowledge, judgment, and action, and how institutions can adapt under uncertainty. He is Dean of Libraries and University Librarian at the University of Virginia, where he also serves as Special Advisor to the Provost on AI Literacy and Professor of Education by courtesy.
His frameworks travel well beyond UVA. CLEAR, a prompting framework, appears in 200 or more institutional guides worldwide. The Archival AI Protocol treats AI training on archival collections as a disposition decision that cannot be undone. The Statement of Shared Practice, which he launched, unites more than 20 institutions around common terms for AI access to unique cultural collections.
At UVA he co-founded the AI Literacy and Action Lab with Christa Acampora, Dean of Arts and Sciences, and co-chairs the University's AI governance committee with Chief Information Officer Kelly Doney. He teaches Thinking in the Age of AI, a seminar on what students keep and what they give up when they hand their thinking to a machine.
Lo has held leadership roles at the University of New Mexico, Penn State University, the University of Alabama, and Kansas State University. He served as President of the Association of College and Research Libraries in 2024–25, where he established the task force that developed the AI Competencies for Library Workers.
Lo holds an EdD from the University of Pennsylvania, a postgraduate diploma in Artificial Intelligence for Business from the University of Oxford Saïd Business School, a Master of Science in Information Studies from Florida State University, an MA in Survey Research from the University of Connecticut, and an MFA in Screenwriting from Hollins University. He has given more than 100 invited talks since January 2024, with in-person keynotes and lectures in eight countries. His recent writing appears in the Guardian, The Conversation, and other venues. His forthcoming book, Anchored Adaptation: AI Literacy and Workforce Reskilling in Academic Libraries, arrives from ACRL in fall 2027.
Outside his professional work, Lo is a traveler and food enthusiast who has eaten at more than 120 restaurants featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives since 2010. He is a lifelong Arsenal supporter.