Behind the AI
Understanding Research Tools in the Age of LLMs, RAG, and AI Literacy
Join ER&L and Pluto Labs for a free webinar on how researchers are using AI in real research workflows and the technologies powering today’s AI research tools, including LLMs and RAG. This presentation will also discuss AI literacy, including how to understand, apply, and evaluate AI in academic and research settings.
Live Webinar
June 24, 2026
11:00 AM Central
The rapid integration of AI into academia is no longer optional.
As AI-powered research tools continue to expand, libraries are increasingly expected to evaluate these tools, provide guidance, and support researchers navigating a rapidly evolving landscape.
Understanding the underlying technologies behind AI — beyond surface-level functionality and into how these systems actually work — can help institutions develop more meaningful evaluation criteria and more practical guidance for researchers.
This session explores how researchers are currently using AI in their workflows and introduces the core technologies behind modern AI research tools, including LLMs and RAG. The session also examines the capabilities and limitations of these systems. Building on this foundation, the session further explores what “AI literacy” really means across four core domains — understanding, application, evaluation, and ethics — and discusses how librarians, as information professionals, can approach their evolving role in the AI era.
Following this session, participants will be able to:
- Understand the core technologies behind AI research tools, including LLMs and RAG, and recognize their key limitations.
- Distinguish between different types of AI research tools, how they generate responses, and how researchers are currently using them in practice.
- Understand how Scinapse and Scinapse AI support researchers throughout the research workflow.
- Explore perspectives on AI literacy across four domains — understanding, application, evaluation, and ethics — in the context of supporting researchers and institutional decision-making.
Meet the Presenters
Junseon Yoo, CEO at Pluto Labs
Junseon Yoo is the CEO and founder of Pluto Labs and the lead architect behind Scinapse AI’s multi-agent research system. A former researcher at POSTECH, he founded Pluto Labs to reduce bottlenecks in today’s research environment and build more efficient infrastructure for scientific research. Drawing from both technical and research experience, he focuses on how AI can support and transform academic workflows in practice. He has spoken on topics related to AI, open science, and scholarly infrastructure at venues including LODAC (Linked Open Data Annual Conference), the Korean Library and Information Science Society, IEEE, and the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI).
Sanha Kim, CRO at Pluto Labs
Sanha is the Chief Revenue Officer at Pluto Labs, Inc. He has spent many years working in the academic market, building close relationships with librarians, scholarly societies, and conference communities, and has consistently shaped Pluto Labs’ direction around what these partners actually need. His focus is on delivering meaningful value to the emerging AI-driven academic market while building long-term partnerships with libraries as a trusted collaborator rather than simply a vendor. Sanha is a regular participant in international academic and library conferences, where he engages directly with librarians to understand the evolving challenges of scholarly information access in the age of AI.
