UPDATE 2/27/25: This story has been corrected to reference the University at Albany's College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity; not the college's xCITE laboratory, which is a software development lab in the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center.
The next generation of technological advancement is taking shape in the Capital Region, with students utilizing artificial intelligence to find new solutions to common problems.
With New York Governor Kathy Hochul pushing to make the Capital Region a technology and manufacturing hub of the future, the technology to make that possible is being developed by the area’s college students.
Empire AI, a $400 million public-private partnership, includes Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the State University of New York, and the City University of New York. Each school contributed $25 million to the project. The effort seeks to create an AI computing hub at the University at Buffalo.
Last year, the University at Albany unveiled a $16.5 million AI supercomputer. Students at the public college are working on developing AI applications in a number of fields.
Inside UAlbany's AI in Complex Systems Laboratory, a software development lab in the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity, Radhakrishnan Venkatakrishnan is surrounded by computers and a neon sign with the letters "AI."
The third-year PhD student is using artificial intelligence to recreate the personalities of long-dead, pioneering scientists.
“If you say the model to be like Albert Einstein, it might probably say every research work or quote his works. But how does it actually understand how he thought about certain things when it is giving you the response?” Venkatakrishnan said.
Fellow PhD student Hakam Otal sees AI as an important tool for the future of cybersecurity.
“Attackers could connect our servers and try some codes and try some attacking, and they could easily detect it's a decoy system. But right now, we can mimic those our real systems better, and they can think it's a real system that they can spend more time. They can spend they can give more information to us so we can collect more information,” Otal said.
Otal says his developments can protect New York’s critical infrastructure, like factories or power grids.
Mikail Demir, a fellow PhD student, is studying potential applications of AI in law. A lawyer in his native Turkey, Demir says he wants his research to make lawyers’ lives simpler. He says AI can be a helpful case law research partner.
“Try to separate it into chunks like so. Can you research me ‘what is the current legislation in that topic? For the U.S.? What other states did? Can you summarize them? Can you make a briefing report?” Demir said.
Demir says artificial intelligence can benefit legal organizations that may have less time and money available than other, larger firms.
“There are lots of pro bono organizations, but their funding are limited, so they like they don't have too much stuff. They rely on pro bono lawyers, to be honest. So from form for my research, I believe we can use AI to automate their processes,” Demir said.
PhD student Mahsa Goodarzi says she wants to use AI to help creatives generate new ideas — and contribute to works that promote social change.
“I come from a very multi-disciplinary background. I studied applied math, I studied fashion, and I studied media management, and now I'm doing information science, because it's very interdisciplinary, and I've worked with both sides of this domain. I've worked with creators, I've worked with designers, I've worked with stylists. I am a stylist by practice, so I understand that group of people, and having the math background and now working on, actually, AI models and these tools; I see that connection,” Goodarzi said.
What’s at the intersection of art, cybersecurity, and artificial consciousness? UAlbany PhD student Christoph Schwartz says video games. When people are playing games online, the data they send over networks is unique to each game.
Schwartz says that can create vulnerabilities for players.
“We can figure out what game is being played, and now we can focus on, OK, now I can look for just vulnerabilities in this game server and attack specific, you know, specific games via that,” Schwartz said.
Schwartz says AI could also be used to make gaming fairer.
Across the Hudson River, students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy are also digging deep into the possibilities of artificial intelligence.
RPI PhD student Danielle Villa thinks AI can be used not just in the digital realm but in real-world applications, too. She’s studying how AI can be applied for social good: how to make people’s lives easier.
“Where I see AI being particularly helpful is with things like weather. We've seen that it gets really, really cold and icy up here,” Villa said.
Villa thinks AI can be used to predict damage from winter storms.
“In meteorology, in things like weather prediction, if there was a way to predict where trees are likely to lose their branches or fall over, if there was a way for the AI model to predict, ‘OK, I think these five intersections are likely to have some amount of debris in them,’ and then we could send people out to remove those as quickly as possible. Maybe I wouldn't have a tree in the middle of my road for a week after a snowstorm,” Villa said.
RPI and UAlbany are collaborating on quantum computing. RPI is now home to IBM Quantum System One, an advanced supercomputer that officials say can help solve problems in AI, national security, healthcare, and other areas.
Through UAlbany's IBM Artificial Intelligence Unit, students from both institutions are collaborating on solving problems through groundbreaking technology.
Kesh Kesavadas, Vice President for Research and Economic Development at UAlbany's ETEC center, says the Capital Region is primed for tech development.
He says, with both research and development happening alongside manufacturing in the area, it's a rare environment.
"In Albany proper, we are designing the next and making the new generation of chips. But at the same time, there are number of both from the public resource side and also in the private side who are applying AI, right, using these chips and then applying it for treating diseases, looking at RNA for rare diseases," Kesavadas said.
UAlbany is also home to the AI Plus Institute, which seeks to further the cause of AI problem solving by bringing AI professionals and faculty together for research, while RPI is doing similar work through its Future of Computing Research Collaboration with IBM.
