Affiliated Faculty Help Position UT as Leader in AI’s Engineering Revolution Through TCE
Artificial intelligence has integrated into nearly all sectors of society, requiring thoughtful and groundbreaking approaches to implement new technologies and accelerate scientific discovery. The Tickle College of Engineering (TCE) and Center for Transportation Research (CTR) affiliated faculty are helping position the University of Tennessee as a hub for applied high-impact AI innovation.
From materials discovery to healthcare to agriculture, TCE is at the forefront of the AI revolution. Research being done across every department in the college has the potential to improve lives, create jobs, and make the world safer while educating the field’s future workforce.
Hundreds of TCE professors and students are leveraging AI tools for problem-solving and process optimization while emphasizing ethical and community-centered outcomes. They have integrated AI into workflows to improve efficiency, safety, maintenance, and forecasting. They are creating tools to responsibly assimilate AI into engineering processes to manufacture components and parts that drive everyday life.
Accelerated Discovery
In a project that could position UT as a leader in the space of student funding, Anahita Khojandi, CTR affiliated faculty member and a professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) is collaborating with several TCE administrators to use AI to improve the efficiency, agility, and effectiveness of scholarship allocation at UT by having AI automate parts of the process that are more mundane while preserving staff control and trust.
“At colleges and universities, scholarships are one of our most powerful tools for access, recruitment, retention, and student success. Yet the way we award them is often fragmented, manual, and time-intensive,” Khojandi said. “In the short term, the potential impact is operational, such as less time spent on manual matching and faster award decisions. But the bigger impact is strategic, where the AI tool will enable us to make earlier scholarship offers to attract the best and brightest students, improve enrollment yield, and better align students and awards to improve award utilization.”
Farmlands and Weather Forecasts
AI has become an integral component in agriculture and weather forecasting, helping increase crop yields, reduce waste, prevent widespread damage, and develop safety plans.
Computer science Associate Professor and CTR affiliated faculty member Charles Cao, an expert in agriculture AI-driven digital twins, is leading a worldwide project to develop a range of AI-based tools that help farmers detect threats early, manage resources more efficiently, and make better-informed decisions in the field. The project aims to reduce crop losses from pests and disease and decrease fertilizer and water usage.
In the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), Chancellor’s Professor and CTR affiliated faculty member Joshua Fu and Research Associate Professor Jia Xing are using AI to improve the accuracy of air quality forecasting to help avoid devastating social and economic impacts stemming from volatile weather patterns. Xing developed a ML-based atmospheric chemistry model for global applications in air quality forecasting and management that has been adopted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Read the full article at tickle.utk.edu