Suffolk Reporter

The expanding role of artificial intelligence (AI) in education is evident at Stony Brook University, where a proactive approach is being developed to incorporate AI into biomedical engineering programs. This initiative is part of a broader collaborative effort with institutions such as UCSD, Cornell, the University of Utah, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Florida. Their findings, published in the Biomedical Engineering Education journal, aim to establish a framework to equip students with essential AI skills for their future careers.

David A. Rubenstein, associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Stony Brook University, emphasizes the need for a proactive integration of AI into educational curriculums. "Generative AI hit the world in a big way about a year or two ago," Rubenstein states, highlighting the rapid impact and necessity of adapting educational methods. Rubenstein, who leads the project on AI implementation, adds, "We are trying to be more proactive on how we can appropriately integrate it into our curriculums, train students on the use of these tools, and really focus on these skills that our students are expected to learn and their employers are expecting them to have."

To gather insights on effective AI integration, Rubenstein and his team conducted sessions at an educational conference, collecting data from approximately 100 universities. This research aims to provide recommendations tailored to individual fields, recognizing that AI's role differs across disciplines such as engineering and medicine.

Rose Tirotta-Esposito, director for the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, stresses the need for collaboration to optimize AI's potential in education. "We must also reflect on our education and teaching practices to determine how to best utilize AI as a tool to support and enhance learning experiences while connecting higher education with the evolving demands of the professional world," she says.

Despite the challenges posed by AI's rapid evolution, Rubenstein emphasizes the importance of aligning AI educational integration with professional and workforce development. "Even if we come up with great ideas of how to incorporate it, these methods can become dated pretty quickly. So I think in the long term there needs to be an approach that monitors how generative AI is evolving," Rubenstein notes. He advocates for AI literacy as a fundamental cross-disciplinary requirement and urges universities to implement AI as a tool beneficial to students' career development, rather than focusing solely on technical usage.

Rubenstein underscores that AI integration should not merely address specific technologies like Chat GPT. "The value of generative AI is that students can see how they can integrate it into their future careers," he states, urging educational institutions to adapt proactively.