UCF recently announced the launch of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence (IAI), uniting the university’s AI talents under one umbrella. Now, the university is marking another milestone – becoming one of the few universities in the U.S. to offer a course on generative AI.
The Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering launched a special topics course this semester titled AI in Mechanical, Aerospace, Biomedical and Design Engineering, taught by Lecturer Shad Abdel. With his help, graduate students, professionals and senior undergraduates can now learn how AI can be integrated into engineering.
Abdel says that what current generative AI models are missing are an engineering database, making them a less effective tool for generating novel designs for products or machine or components. But through his course, students will evaluate select generative AI models tailored for mechanical and aerospace engineering design problems, as well as the integration of AI with traditional engineering workflows.
Students will study various topics related to machine learning, including artificial neural networks and graphical neural networks, which mimic the human brain to process data. By learning about AI processing, students can learn how AI models can be trained to create something new.
“We currently use generative AI based on theory and math,” Abdel says. “But we want to be able to use it to generate something new.
Due to the lack of published resources for a course such as this one, Abdel prepares each lecture with his own research and eventually plans to create a book to teach this topic to future students. When conducting his lectures, Professor Abdel provides his students with a PowerPoint, practice problems, and weekly projects. During class, Abdel focuses on encouraging participation from his students. Every week, he assigns a project for his students to apply their knowledge, typically discussed at the end of each class, then he encourages two students to present their work for constructive feedback.
“This specific course is teaching something that was not taught before, and this offer is not in every university in the states, and each class is not exactly the same,” Abdel says. “What I am trying to achieve with this course is something that would be based on a student’s understanding of AI. We teach them the principles, what they would use, and how they would apply it would be their own.”
Abdel says the special topics course will evolve into a graduate-level course that will be implemented in the spring. Senior-level undergraduate students who are interested in AI will also be able to enroll in the course.
“The course plants the seeds for research and serves senior undergraduates who want to take a graduate-level course,” Abdel says. “It’s also a good way for them to get into research.
Students who complete the course will be prepared to use AI in the industry. Abdel says AI can be applied to tasks that require human logic without endangering a human life. If trained correctly, aerospace engineers can use AI to make unexpected decisions in emergency situations – a task that programmed computers cannot perform.
“It’s just like science fiction,” Abdel says. “The sky is the limit right now.”
- Written by Hannia Gonzalez