Aurora the AI dog and UAA student innovators will soon showcase their AI-integrated talents

UAA’s College of Business and Public Policy will be hosting a third annual showcase on Oct. 4. Artificial intelligence controlled F16 fighter jets and medical uses for artificial intelligence at a patient’s bedside will be among topics discussed at the showcase, which will take place in Rasmusen Hall. 

This year's theme is artificial intelligence — or AI — and will include a variety of speakers and innovators that have utilized AI through work, experience or AI classes held on campus.

Professor of Entrepreneurship, UAA Department Chair of Marketing, Management, Logistics, and Business Analytics and showcase organizer Dr. Helena Wisniewski and multiple UAA student innovators spoke with The Northern Light about UAA’s upcoming AI showcase.

Wisniewski sat at the head of the table in UAA’s AI lab — ADSAIL — on the third floor of Rasmusen Hall as she spoke about the incentives of the upcoming AI showcase.

Some of the main incentives for this year’s themed showcase are to demonstrate the academic achievements of College of Business and Public Policy students, classes and other achievements of the program. 

UAA graduate students will be presenting their AI-enhanced projects at the showcase and a “mini trade show” will follow. Event attendees will have the opportunity to talk with the student innovators and network with speakers and community members. 

Wisniewski said Rasmusen Hall will have the Department of Transportation’s “Aurora,” the AI dog, walking the first floor of the building while attendees receive a tour of the AI Lab. 

Guest speakers include Dr. J. Randall Moorman, presenting on “AI at the bedside is saving lives” and former Air Force Chief Scientist Dr. Victoria Coleman speaking about AI-piloted F16 fighters.

The graduate students created their inventions during the previous spring semester in Wisniewski’s AI Concepts & Business Applications class. “They divide up into teams, and each team can come up with a project to use AI to make it more efficient and effective,” said Wisniewski. 

Chelsea Spaulding is a student innovator who spoke for her team which comprised Barbara Kahula, Xaviour Campbell, Makana Eleneki and Kierann Bailey. 

The students worked throughout the spring semester using digital twins to determine the most efficient use of Anchorage's natural gas reserve — which is important because some studies suggest it will be depleted by 2026. 

Digital twins are a “virtual representation of an object or system designed to reflect a physical object accurately,” according to IBM.

Spaulding and her team created this particular digital twin to combat liquid natural gas concerns for rural and urban areas of Alaska. 

The project was created to “identify issues like finding the seepage points, optimizing the gas distribution, improving infrastructure, enhancing the resilience of the supply chain, and providing data driven insights to all of the people involved…  from production to getting it in the houses,” said Spaulding. 

Anastasiia Korobitsyna spoke for her team, which consisted of Kallen Mead, James Butler and Tuva Granøien. They created a menu that utilized augmented reality to customize automobiles to assist people with disabilities when driving. 

Korobitsyna and her team created the menu for disabled people to have access to car functions like selecting  music stations or accelerating the vehicle. The team also plans to make the customized menu voice-activated, similar to Alexa, but with more physically helpful interactions. 

Korobitsyna said “Vehicles are designed with assumptions around physical capacity,” and this limitation may not be enough for some people to fully control a vehicle. The menus will be completely customized for each individual who uses the program. 

“And for now, we are going to implement this model to existing vehicles, but in the future, maybe we can work with manufacturers … directly to integrate this system to all the vehicles,” said Korobitsyna.

While the graduate students wait for real-life applications to their modern inventions, Wisniewski wished for a better understanding of AI in the public eye. "And I tell my students that AI is not going to replace your job. It's the person who knows AI that will replace it,” said Wisniewski.