Innovation Boosted by AI

As a research university with an entrepreneurial mindset, UB’s AI and machine learning resources go beyond the boundaries of the campus to help businesses and organizations solve problems in the real world. Companies partner with UB to leverage AI for innovations in homeland security, brain surgery, talent acquisition, autonomous vehicles, college admissions, agriculture and much more.

When the university made a name for itself in the late 1980s and early 1990s for developing technology to read handwritten addresses, the breakthrough caught the attention of companies like Lockheed Martin and Moog, who approached UB’s computer science teams to work on their R&D projects.

Venu Govindaraju, vice president for research and economic development, says UB gained a reputation for successful AI research partnerships early on because it was willing to tackle challenges tech companies didn’t think were worthy of investment or were possible.

“Our culture at UB has always been in AI,” he says. “We did postal automation before anyone thought AI could do anything useful, and that work introduced us to industry. We’re a university that doesn’t just publish papers—we develop real-world solutions that can have immediate positive impact on society.”

Several campus entities serve as conduits to connect UB’s AI and startup assets to companies and organizations in Western New York and beyond. Among them is UB Business and Entrepreneur Partnerships (BEP), which spearheads a significant portion of the university’s formal relationships with the business world. BEP connects companies with UB resources including funding, facilities, faculty research and experts who can advise on technology licensing, marketing, investor relations and legal matters.

Through BEP, UB is partnering with dozens of established companies and early-stage startups to develop products that leverage AI. These partnerships benefit the businesses, university faculty and students, and ultimately, communities and consumers whose lives are positively impacted by product advancements.

That’s the premise fueling an AI system that monitors the health of crops growing indoors. Jinjun Xiong, SUNY Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and director of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, teamed up with StarCo Lighting, a local lighting manufacturer owned Muk Musleh, BS ’09, to develop a camera-computer system that monitors plants and automatically adjusts the color and temperature of grow lights to improve yields. But to continue testing the system, they needed plants and people who knew how to grow them. So Musleh, with help from Chris Janson, senior business development manager with UB BEP, connected the team with Ellicottville Greens, whose indoor vertical farms already happened to use StarCo Lighting products.

With Janson's guidance, the team was awarded a competitive FuzeHub grant last year to continue the project, creating opportunities for UB students to contribute to cutting-edge research.

“The faculty are the main experts, but the inquisitive and driven students are critical components,” says Janson. He adds that one master's student was so inspired by the project that he is now pursuing a PhD.

If successful, this AI-driven system has the potential to improve food security by extending growing seasons in colder climates, reducing crop failure and increasing the amount of food that can be grown with fewer space and labor constraints.

It’s not just UB-based AI research that garners university support—UB also spurs economic development in Western New York by attracting and growing AI-based startups. UB’s Cultivator program, for example, provides funding and mentorship to companies like Neotrust, which developed patented blockchain technology to establish rights to AI-generated content, creating a new standard for ethics in AI use.

Neotrust CEO Caesar Medel said he and fellow co-founder Corey Lanzing moved their company from Florida to Buffalo specifically because of UB’s Cultivator. In the past year, the program has provided Neotrust with pre-seed capital, office space and mentors who helped the company fine-tune its marketing messages and attract customers.