While the average person is only just beginning to realize the potential impacts of artificial intelligence, scientists across the globe have long been researching how the technology can improve – and perhaps even revolutionize – a wide array of processes and fields.
Here in southeastern Wisconsin, university researchers and industry partners have been exploring how AI programs can be used in everything from manufacturing to fighting mosquito-borne illnesses.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
At the UW-Milwaukee, students and faculty have been applying AI to a variety of studies.
At the Connected Systems Institute – an on-campus mini factory – university researchers and faculty are developing new ways to integrate digital technologies like AI, augmented reality, data analytics, digital twins and robotics into next-generation manufacturing. This includes working with the tools that support domain-specific research and education on the Industrial Internet of Things, factory automation and the implementation of Industry 4.0 solutions. Anish Sinha, professor of IT management at the Lubar College of Business, is one of the professors involved in the project.
Biophysics
Abbas Ourmazd is leading a team of data scientists who develop the machine-learning algorithms needed to reconstruct the tsunami of data generated by X-ray crystallography that capture thousands of images of proteins. The longtime professor’s lab uses complex AI to turn this data into 3D movies of proteins inside our bodies carrying out biological tasks necessary for life and health. The films carry the potential to cure lethal diseases. They already have a film that shows how a protein “tells” a virus to infect a cell.
Consumer psychology/business intelligence
Purush Papatla, a professor of marketing, leads the UWM arm of the Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute, a collaboration of the Milwaukee-based life insurance company, UWM and Marquette University to conduct research and train the next generation of data scientists. Papatla’s expertise is in making sense of the millions of pieces of data on social media to gain insight into consumer preferences and behaviors.
Launched in 2019 to prepare students to meet the growing need for data scientists across various industries, the NMDSI is supported through a $40 million investment across all three partnering entities. In its first round of research projects, NMDSI’s faculty and student researchers looked at inequity in a Milwaukee neighborhood, the opioid crisis and 2020 voter sentiment.
“The goal was to create the formation of a technology ecosystem that really advances southeastern Wisconsin as a national hub for technology,” said Jonathan Stark, executive director of NMDSI.
Milwaukee School of Engineering
At the Milwaukee School of Engineering, the emerging power of AI led the college to create an endowed chair for the study of the technology. Jeremy Kedziora, Ph.D., was named in March as the school’s first Pieper Power Endowed Chair in Artificial Intelligence, a position made possible through a $2.5 million gift from Pieper Electric Inc. and the PPC Foundation Inc.
An award-winning researcher and scientist with 17 years of experience developing new methods in machine learning, Bayesian inference and game theory, Kedziora was previously a director of data science and analytics at Northwestern Mutual.
Kedziora will hold a full-time faculty position in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at MSOE and will pursue research advancing the interaction of artificial intelligence with humans and its potential impacts on society, according to MSOE.
Fighting bloodborne diseases
One area where MSOE is applying AI is in finding better ways to battle diseases such as malaria and Zika virus.
To that end, RJ Nowling, Ph.D., an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, is working with Michelle Riehle, Ph.D., a molecular scientist and researcher at the Medical College of Wisconsin, to study mosquito DNA to determine which species are better carriers of the bloodborne diseases.
Because there are thousands of genomic regions that could hold the secret as to why one mosquito is a better carrier than another, Nowling is using AI to rank and prioritize the different parts of the DNA.
“We are using AI to start with a very large number of genomic regions that could be involved and filter that down to a smaller group that could be tested with wet lab techniques,” Nowling said. “If we can understand the genetic basis, we can use that in population control efforts.”
Marquette University
At Marquette University, the Center for Data, Ethics, and Society within the Klingler College of Arts & Sciences has been working to address the ethical, social and political dimensions of an increasingly data-driven society.
Established in February 2022, the center is directed by privacy and data ethics scholar Michael Zimmer, Ph.D. He recently attended the Global University Summit for the Rome Call for AI Ethics at the University of Notre Dame, which explored how universities can use the complementary roles of research, education and policy in the development of human-centered approaches to AI.
