Elijah is a Information Technology major focused on artificial intelligence. His research explores how AI can support small businesses through automated customer service on Instagram, improving response times and reducing the burden on staff.

Under the guidance of Professor Debapriya Hazra, Elijah developed an AI-powered framework for 24/7 text-based customer engagement. Built using n8n software, the Meta Graph API, and Gemini, the system demonstrates how small businesses can provide always-available support without the waiting times of traditional customer service. His work draws on advances in Natural Language Processing, enabling conversational agents to handle multiple customer inquiries simultaneously.

The IEEE R1 & R2 Student Activities Conference (SAC) is an annual event organized by the IEEE Regions 1 and 2. This conference provides students with the opportunity to participate in hands-on workshops, compete in various technical and professional competitions, and network with fellow students, industry professionals, and IEEE leaders.

In recent years, the IEEE Â鶹´«Ă˝ÔÚĎß Student Organization has organized numerous academic events, including seminars, hands-on workshops, and showcases in intelligent systems, robotics, AI, and computer science, helping students develop practical technical skills, explore emerging technologies, and engage with the broader engineering community.

Joining IEEE will help to enhance students’ professional records and gain recognition for their future career development. Learn more about  and the benefits. Â鶹´«Ă˝ÔÚĎß Students are eligible for membership fee reimbursement via the IEEE North Jersey Section and IEEE AP Society.

Process for Membership and Compensation

1. Visit the website
2. Click Join as a student
3. Download your receipt after completing the registration for both IEEE and IEEE AP Society
4. Email the receipt to Dr. Weitian Wang (IEEE MSU Student Branch Advisor) at wangw@montclair.edu

Jordan Murphy is a graduate research assistant at the , led by Dr. Rui Li, in the School of Computing. His research focuses on multimodal human-machine interaction, affective computing, and 3D modeling and animation.

The has become an international forum for researchers and professionals in all areas of Information, Intelligence, Systems and Applications. We invite submissions of papers presenting high-quality original research and developments for the conference tracks listed.

This work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grants and .

Weitian Wang, director of the University’s Collaborative Robotics and Smart Systems Laboratory, is principal investigator (PI) on the grant and working with co-PI Michelle Zhu, professor and the associate chair of the Department of Computer Science, and co-PI Amy Tuininga, director of the PSEG Institute for Sustainability Studies.

On paper, the impressive robot system may sound intimidating: “a multimodal collaborative robot system,” or MCROS, that will “advance a wide range of ongoing research projects sponsored by various agencies/organizations and foster multiple potential funding opportunities distributed across four colleges [College of Science and Mathematics, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, College of Education and Human Services and the Feliciano School of Business] and 12 academic units” covering “five focused areas: (1) intelligent systems and advanced computing, (2) ecology and chemistry sciences, (3) smart urban agriculture and food science, (4) human-factors engineering and social science, and (5) interactive learning.”

But the researchers say the robot system will also be somewhat … adorable.

Robots in the system will be short and squat, but agile, and run on all-terrain wheels. Their appendages will be interchangeable. Sensors will make them smart and capable of learning.

The robot system will call the Center for Computing and Information Science home, where Wang says “other researchers can come to utilize the MCROS for indoor robot-related experiments.” Zhu explains that the robot system can also “be deployed in the field, in the wild. So it can help researchers to do some dangerous things.”

“It will be able to do anything from teaching a foreign language to sampling plants to see if they are ready to harvest,” says Tuininga. In fact, the robot system will shortly begin working with a vertical farm in Hackensack once some more parts are purchased.

Tuininga explains, “Our vertical farm partners are partnering with a program for adults with autism. We can use the language development component to work with people with disabilities at the same time as the plant sensing. Since it’s collaborative, the scientists and the adults with autism and the robot are all learning from each other.”

In addition, the robot system will aim to open up the STEM field to more students, especially female students and underrepresented minorities, with tangible and engaging hands-on projects in robot-supported courses and outreach programs.

Besides connecting multiple disciplines within the University, the system will ultimately connect the University nationwide to scholars, helping researchers at Â鶹´«Ă˝ÔÚĎß to launch robotics workshops with the state-of-the-art robotics knowledge and activities for local K-12 students, especially those from underserved districts, contributing to the development and diversity of the future high-tech workforce for New Jersey and the country.

But before the robot has its world debut next April or May, there is a lot of work to be done.

“Before you teach the MCROS, it’s just a machine,” says Wang. “The MCROS will learn from human demonstrations to make itself smarter just like a student will learn from teachers.”

Adds Zhu: “Anybody can buy the hardware, but then we also make the robot intelligent by developing different artificial intelligence software. With the software, the robot will be tailored to each different domain, each different problem.”

Tuininga says the project is “sharing the expertise of computer science with the whole University.”

“This is the beginning. It’s a gateway to allow many, many new possibilities for collaborations across campus and outside of campus for human and technology interaction.”

“Another feature is the uniqueness of our University,” says Wang. “We will have a lot of applications across subjects, from multiple colleges, multiple departments. The unique feature for our robot system is collaboration.”

Story by Staff Writer Mary Barr Mann. Photo by University Photographer Mike Peters.

Recently, Drs. Weitian Wang (School of Computing), Michelle Zhu (School of Computing), and Amy Tuininga (PSEG Institute for Sustainability Studies) were to construct a multimodal collaborative robot system (MCROS) to support Â鶹´«Ă˝ÔÚĎß (MSU) cross-disciplinary human-centered research and education.

What This Means at the University Level

The MCROS will provide a state-of-the-art robot platform to advance a wide range of ongoing research projects sponsored by various agencies/organizations and foster multiple potential funding opportunities distributed across four colleges and 12 academic units (departments/institute/center) at MSU. The research activities that will be enabled or expanded based on the MCROS mainly cover five focused areas: (1) intelligent systems and advanced computing, (2) ecology and chemistry sciences, (3) smart urban agriculture and food science, (4) human-factors engineering and social science, and (5) interactive learning. In particular, the MCROS will also provide students, especially female students and underrepresented minorities, with tangible and engaging hands-on projects by robot-supported courses and outreach programs. This MRI project will encourage and facilitate innovative collaborative research across multiple departments and schools in a variety of disciplines. Additionally, the MCROS will broadly open to nationwide scholars. This project will help researchers at MSU to launch robotics workshops with the state-of-the-art robotics knowledge and hands-on activities for local K-12 students, especially who are from under-served districts, which will contribute to the development and diversity of the future high-tech workforce for the NJ state and the country.

What This Means at the Department Level

The MCROS will significantly enhance the CS department’s research infrastructure to support Artificial Intelligence related projects from various research laboratories in the Center of Computing and Information Science. Many synergistic research can be carried out through the collaborative efforts between faculty members with different expertise, hardware, and software resources. In particular, the Data Science center and Cybersecurity center would be able to directly benefit from this multimodal robot system, which can be an ideal experimental platform to deploy and test various AI-related applications. Furthermore, undergraduate and graduate students will gain valuable hands-on experiences from our robotics courses and research projects guided under their faculty advisors.

The Principal Investigators

Associate Professor, School of Computing

Phone

973-655-5269

Email

wangw@montclair.edu

Location

Center for Computing and Information Science, 227C

Dr. Wang, the recipient of the NSF CISE Research Initiation Initiative (CRII) award, is currently a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science. He is the director of . The theme of CRoSS Lab’s research is to release robots from cages and empower human-robot interaction to be high-quality, easy-to-implement, and cost-competitive in human-centered collaborative contexts. CRoSS Lab’s research focuses on collaborative robotics, smart systems, and their CRoSS-disciplinary application in smart manufacturing, intelligent transportation, aerospace, healthcare, smart agriculture, daily assistance, and interactive learning.

Professor, College of Science and Mathematics

Phone

973-655-4289

Email

zhumi@montclair.edu

Location

Center for Computing and Information Science, 327B

Dr. Zhu is a Professor and the Associate Chair in the Department of Computer Science. Her research areas focus on parallel and distributed computing, cloud computing, big data analytics and computer science education. She is also the director of the High-Performance Computing and Systems (HPCS) Laboratory at MSU. HPCS lab is currently collaborating with researchers from multiple disciplines on projects such as autonomous vehicle, smart grid, AI for environmental protection, transformative teaching and learning using innovative technologies and game-based learning. Her research projects have been funded by NSF, DOE, ORNL and Nvidia.

Associate Dean for Research and Partnerships, School of Computing

Phone

973-655-3667

Email

tuiningaa@montclair.edu

Location

Center for Environmental & Life Sciences, 206A

Dr. Tuininga serves as Director of the PSEG Institute for Sustainability Studies at MSU. She is a co-creator of NSF-funded (AISL, INCLUDES, HSI, and IUSE) and corporate and private foundation-funded interdisciplinary educational programs that have engaged hundreds of high schools, undergraduate, and graduate students from low-income and underrepresented groups in STEM. She engages faculty from diverse departments and colleges, inside and outside the university, as well as numerous external partnering organizations, including Fortune 500 and multi-national corporations, local companies, non-profits, government agencies, and community groups to address sustainability. Dr. Tuininga’s research focuses on human impacts on environments and their function.

• Stephen Bier ’20, MS in Information Technology
• Brian Fajardo ’18, BS in Information Technology, current MS in Cybersecurity
• Obinna Ezeadum, ’19, BS in Information Technology, current MS in Cybersecurity
• German Guzman, ’20, BS in Computer Science, current MS in Cybersecurity
• Kazi Zakia Sultana, Assistant Professor
• Vaibhav Anu, Assistant Professor.

The paper will be included in IEEE Proceedings when they are posted!