About Tobias “Toby” Merriman, MFA
AI & Technology Professional
Toby Merriman works alongside interpreters, naturalists, and natural history educators to put modern AI and immersive-media tools to work in their programs without losing the storytelling heart of the field.
He serves as Assistant Director of the Center for Virtual Expression at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he integrates AI, virtual reality, and augmented reality into the classroom and trains faculty, students, and professional staff to use these tools thoughtfully. He is also Co-Chair of the SIU System Artificial Intelligence Taskforce, helping shape AI policy and faculty literacy programming across the university system.
Toby holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Fiction and Digital Narrative from SIUC, where he also teaches Digital Narrative, a course built around AI-augmented storytelling for YouTube, TikTok, and other digital platforms. His own narrative work includes Lore Dump, a multi-year YouTube series combining original writing, AI-assisted illustration, and immersive worldbuilding, a direct expression of the interpretive instinct: tell the story so vividly that the audience feels they were there.
His applied work centers on accessibility and inclusion. Among other projects, Toby has built tools that let a blind player take full part in tabletop role-playing sessions alongside sighted players, a working demonstration that emerging technology, designed with care, can widen rather than narrow who gets to participate. He brings that same accessibility-first thinking to every interpreter and educator he advises.
Toby lives in Carbondale, Illinois, where he works on translating new technology into tools that natural history educators can actually use.
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