A group of Notre Dame students is using the power of AI to help local businesses solve real-world problems.
The university’s iNDustry Labs launched its AI Leaders of Tomorrow fellowship program back in February. Since then, 50 students have completed almost 30 projects, according to Dave Hemler, iNDustry Labs’ senior director of AI and applied learning.
One example is a tool for Notre Dame’s careers website, helping job applicants compare the cost of living with other areas, using U.S. Census data and real-time benefit information from the university. "It ties in real estate listings by neighborhood," Hemler added. "It ties in neighborhood reviews. It ties in maps. It ties in school district reviews. It ties in all kinds of all kinds of amenity and sort of other quality of life/quality of place stuff."
Hemler said they hope to make the tool available to other local businesses.
Fellows have also been tackling challenges at area manufacturers. At Vista Manufacturing in Elkhart, they designed an AI tool that monitors engineers’ workload capacity. Vista Manufacturing President Allen Mazelin said that helps the company decide when to develop new lighting products.
“It’s really helped us to be a little more picky because we had too many in the pipeline, and so now, we can pare that back, based on the capacity that we see in real time, with this tool,” Mazelin explained.
The fellows discussed some recent projects during a showcase event on the Notre Dame campus Thursday.
Hemler says AI lets people solve problems that were previously unsolvable and frees them up for less mundane tasks. “It really enables people to build solutions that you don’t need to be a computer scientist to be able to build interesting software solutions today,” Hemler said.
At Vista Manufacturing, Mazelin said AI tools have given employees more data with which to make decisions, while requiring less time to make reports. “Just this week, somebody in our IT department estimated that we have saved 40 hours a week of time amongst a team of five people,” Mazelin noted.
He calls the fellowship program a “win-win” for the region’s business community. “I love the opportunity to give the students the context to grow and learn and be a blessing to them, but we’re receiving back feedback and guidance, and, through the leadership of the AI [Leaders] of Tomorrow program here, really a vision of what AI can do for us down the road, even much more than what we have today,” Mazelin said.
The University of Notre Dame is a financial supporter of WVPE.
