By SUSAN JONES
A new project announced April 23 brings together unusual bedfellows — Pitt Health Sciences and sports analytics experts in Pitt Athletics — to partner with Amazon Web Services and Pitt IT for a student-led collaboration on data and artificial intelligence.
The University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences and Sports Analytics Cloud Innovation Center (CIC), powered by AWS, will be the first of its kind on the East Coast.
AWS has been working with Pitt’s sports analytics team — headed by Richard Turnquist, assistant athletic director, data and analytics — for a while, said Mark Henderson, Pitt’s chief information officer. Turnquist’s team and AWS “have done some very interesting things that have vaulted the University of Pittsburgh to the top of the heap in terms of using analytics and AI in support of athletics.
“So we’re going to expand this into health sciences, and we’re hiring students who will get real world experience working with the CIC, while working on innovative ideas that benefit us, AWS and humankind.”
Ryan Varley, senior associate athletic director, CFO, said the integration of the athletic department and Pitt IT “has demonstrated really what is truly possible at Pitt if we’re able to harness our institution’s collective strengths, capabilities and resources.”
At the event announcing the new center at a Pitt IT space in the 3500 block of Fifth Avenue, Joe Yun, research professor of electrical computer engineering as well as director of AI enablement for the Office of the CIO, said, “I can tell you that one of the areas in which AI can directly affect society today is health. There’s so many applications with regards to the health realm that AI can support, and we need efforts like this Cloud Innovation Center to accelerate those efforts.”
He also praised the Pitt Athletics analytics team’s work. “You know how much analytics is being used in sports, and I don’t know if you know this, but we have one of the best analytics teams in the nation at the University of Pittsburgh for sports. And so it makes sense that this CIC is focused on health sciences and sports analytics.”
At a University Senate Athletics committee meeting last fall, Turnquist outlined some of the projects they’ve developed with AWS, and other companies. One allowed the athletics sales teams to get better insight on the fan base. They also co-developed a generative AI tool to help the football team in scouting prospects
“We assigned a grade to every player in college football, … using machine learning compiled all of their stats into one record, similar to how we did the fan project, and then we produced a generative AI report that included all of the information of the player, where they’re likely to land, as far as our team’s grading. And then the bottom half of the page was actually a generative AI, ChatGPT write up, scouting-report style.”
Uduak Ndoh, vice chancellor and deputy chief information officer for Pitt Health Sciences, said, “This CIC allows us the opportunity to have access to cutting edge technology, in machine learning, in AI — things that we need to accelerate what we do in the health sciences, in clinical care, in clinical delivery, in discovery, in research.”
Dominic Delmolino, vice president, worldwide public sector technology and innovation at Amazon Web Services, said the company decided to bring the CIC to Pitt because of its reputation as a top 20 research university, “And quite frankly, there’s a commitment to wanting to explore what’s possible. We already had a great relationship here. We’ve done over 30 research projects with Pitt and AWS. We’ve done amazing work around the fan experience … and so this is just a natural evolution of Pitt’s commitment to wanting to advance technology with students.”
AWS also has partnered on a CIC with Arizona State University and California Polytechnic University.
“The launch of the Cloud Innovation Center is just the start of the program that we expect will grow beyond this initial phase,” a Pitt IT spokesman said. “AWS has pledged to fund internships through the next year, and both parties anticipate broadening this collaboration going forward.”
Henderson said Pitt IT has been “collaborating with a broad array of partners to establish Pittsburgh as the epicenter of computationally enabled health sciences. … The Cloud Innovation Center aligns with our ongoing efforts to enable and empower the Pitt community. It will support the work of our researchers in health sciences. It will enhance the success of our athletics program, and it will help our students to develop skills they need for an AI-driven future.”
Five interns have already been hired for the summer — Vincent Niedermayer, Roman Koshovnyk, Varun Sheike, Rowan Michael Morse and Mohammed Misran, who range from a freshman in computer science to a PhD student in economics. Students are encouraged to apply now for fall opportunities at technology.pitt.edu/cic. Current summer interns also will be considered for extensions based on project needs. AWS also is providing a resident architect, who is a Pitt alum, to work with the students.
What the students work on will depend on what problems are brought to them by the University and community. Delmolino said AWS is excited to see “what the students and university are going to be able to do with our technology.”
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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