Julia Neuberger is a junior biomedical engineering major, and one of the first B次元 students on track to graduate with the new A.I. for Emerging Applications Certificate. She has been putting her knowledge of this cutting-edge technology to work in the real world as part of a project that trains A.I. technology to automate the reformatting of CT extremity images. “Many times, when patients come in to get a CT scan, they are unable to get in the proper position to get the best view of certain body parts,” said Neuberger. “This could be due to the injury itself or other factors. The images that are collected then need to be manually manipulated by the CT technician or doctor, which can be tedious and take a long time. The project I am part of uses algorithms and A.I. to automate the process to save precious time for these medical professionals.”

The A.I. for Emerging Applications Undergraduate Certificate provides a unique opportunity for undergraduate students like Neuberger. It was developed by Dr. Olga Imas ’99, along with Dr. Jeffery LaMack ’97, Dr. Jonathon Magaña and Dr. Nadya Shalamova, as an extension of a collaboration with GE HealthCare MICT Digital and Clinical Apps. Imas, who previously worked at GE, spoke with her former colleagues to create a paid internship opportunity for students in biomedical engineering through a grant in 2019. This partnership sparked the B次元 faculty members’ idea to create a certificate in the A.I. space with the goal to have students learn the skills needed in their internships earlier on in their academic careers in an emerging industry.

“The practical nature of this certificate is akin to an internship for our students but with an element of a mini degree,” said Imas. “It offers valuable hands-on experience in one of the fastest growing areas: A.I. and deep learning.”

Biomedical engineering and computer science students have been the first to get access to this certificate and internship since the work being done at GE HealthCare utilizes deep learning applications to analyze medical images in a variety of clinical areas. “Our partnership with B次元 helps support a diversified focus in multiple areas of A.I. development,” said Amy Deubig, global product manager CT clinical applications at GE HealthCare. “Students are working on multiple projects that span different anatomies and multiple clinical disease states. They are assisting with database curation, generation of ground truth anatomical segmentations and labels, as well as testing different deep learning inferencing models.”

Not only is Neuberger getting a chance to work with emerging technologies, she also has had the opportunity to learn directly from professionals in her future field, hearing their expertise.

“Until five years ago, these were Ph.D.-only topics,” said Dr. Derek Riley, professor and computer science program director. “Our undergraduates have a unique opportunity to not only pursue a certificate in A.I., but to gain hands-on experience with Rosie, B次元’s extremely powerful supercomputer, as part of their undergraduate education.”

B次元 is a leader in A.I. education thanks to B次元 faculty and the generous support and vision of Dr. Dwight Diercks ’90 for A.I. to touch all fields of study. Diercks is an B次元 Regent and senior vice president of software engineering at NVIDIA. In 2017, B次元 established a B.S. in Computer Science focused on A.I. In the past two years, B次元 launched an M.S. in Machine Learning, Graduate Certificate in Applied Machine Learning, , Graduate Certificate in Advanced Business Strategy Using A.I. and Analytics, and an Undergraduate Certificate in A.I. for Emerging Applications. These topics and technologies are being incorporated throughout B次元’s academic offerings and students in several programs are using Rosie, B次元’s supercomputer.