AAMU Students Will Conduct Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research

Alabama A&M University administrators joined senior technical managers from Sandia National Laboratories to cut the ribbon on AAMU’s new Artificial Intelligence Cage Tuesday. Sandia is one of three research and development laboratories in the United States Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. Based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the lab works to develop science and technology to resolve the nation’s most challenging security issues.

“This is a significant accomplishment for AAMU to bring our AI research and education capacity to the highest level,” says Dr. Zhengtao Deng, Dean of the AAMU College of Engineering, Technology and Physical Sciences.

Sandia has been collaborating with Alabama A&M since December 2021 through the START program and has funded seven separate research programs at AAMU. START builds academic partnerships that align with Sandia’s mission needs to fuel research collaboration and expose prospective underrepresented students to cutting-edge national laboratory work. In turn, Sandia creates an employee-recruiting pipeline for the some of the strongest engineering talent in the country.

On Tuesday, Sandia representatives toured the campus and watched students showcase the new AI cage and equipment, which is capable of tracking drones.

“What we just saw here in the AI cage is a tool to help with the development of autonomous algorithms that are based on artificial intelligence for the control and application of small unmanned systems," says Dr. Steven Gianoulakis, Senior Manager of Autonomy and Unmanned Systems at Sandia. “This will help the development of more effective ways to steer and utilize drones to do a variety of tasks. It has a variety of applications. It helps us defend against drones because this is becoming one of the largest threats to sensitive facilities. You see what’s happening in the Ukraine right now, all the attacks that are happening are from unmanned drone systems and you must be able to defeat those, so understanding how the systems fly helps you develop better ways to defeat them.”

Students will be able to work safely with drones and automated vehicles and also with the tracking capability within this cage.

"We can load algorithms, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and there are different potential paths for study,” says Dr. Andrew Scott, Chairman of the AAMU Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Program and Interim Director for the RISE Foundation, the contracting arm of the University. “We have AI concentrations, and cybersecurity programs, so this is impactful and provides us a great test platform to do all sorts of things.”

In February 2022, AAMU signed a five-year memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Sandia with the goal of increased percentages of underrepresented minorities enrolling in STEM majors; expanded opportunities for research partnerships and external collaborations; and additional hires of underrepresented minorities at Sandia.

“This facility, which is state of the art, will provide students with a laboratory environment to help them take what they learn in the classroom to develop these AI algorithms, and actually try them out and see how they work in real life,” says Gianoulakis.

“We are building with the guidance of Sandia National Labs, and this space will allow us to showcase our research capabilities. As part of the reimagine AAMU campaign, AI research and experiential learning is one of our main focuses,” adds Deng.

(Photo L-R) Dr. Andrew Scott, AAMU; Gerald Vines, AAMU Faculty Associate for Student Achievement; Dr. Daniel K. Wims, AAMU President; Dr. Steven Gianoulakis, Sandia; Anthony Sanders, Campus Partnership Manager at Sandia; Emily Ahr, Technical Systems Analyst, Sandia