Students across Stony Brook University’s summer programs convened at the Stony Brook Union Ballroom on July 31. More than 100 posters lined the space, spanning research across STEM, medicine and humanities. Provost and Executive Vice President Carl W. Lejuez welcomed the participants with opening remarks.
“Undergraduate research is an incredible chance to learn by doing. In the classroom, you learn how to look at your field through the eyes of the people who came before you,” he said. “What questions did they ask, what answers did they uncover, how did they expand the boundaries of human knowledge and understanding? And that’s so important because that’s also where you learn to see the gaps, to ask your own questions, to use your experiences and curiosity to find out where we go from here. And undergraduate research is how you can begin to answer those questions for yourself. It’s where you become an active participant in building knowledge. It’s where you get to help us look at and understand the world and its cultures in new ways.”
Twenty of the research posters highlighted the research of undergraduate students from AI Innovation Institute’s AI Innovation & Diffusion Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. The six-week paid program, launched in partnership with Farmingdale State College and Suffolk County Community College, recruited 20 students from each partner institution to carry out direct, hands-on research in artificial intelligence.
From June 22 through July 31, these students joined active research groups to work alongside thirteen mentors in seven research laboratories across Stony Brook. The professors, postdoctoral associates and graduate students hailed from interdisciplinary backgrounds — computer science, computational applied mathematics, biomedical information technology, chemical engineering, cognitive sciences and library studies.
Lav R. Varshney, Della Pietra Infinity Professor and director of the AI Innovation Institute (AI3) at Stony Brook University, said, “The AI Innovation and Diffusion REU program helped create a foundation for Long Island undergraduates preparing to join today’s rapidly evolving workforce. The research insights presented across the six weeks of the program and at the symposium were the sign of a growing intellectual community that understands not only how their fields can advance with AI, but also how to build, evaluate, and improve these systems.”
Read the full story at the AI3 website.
Great to see undergraduate students getting hands on experience with AI in areas like computer science, biomedical technology, engineering and cognitive science. Such a program is valuable in allowing students to move beyond the simple theory of AI to learn how to build, evaluate and improve real-world systems with experienced researchers.