New AI lab turns UNI students into research experts
New AI lab turns UNI students into research experts
Buried inside a 300-page Federal Reserve transcript, the actual signal — what policymakers are weighing when making decisions — is rarely stated outright. It has to be dug out, line by line, a process that could take a human researcher months.
At the Wilson College of Business, a new initiative called the AI Plus Lab is teaching undergraduates to do that work quickly and correctly by using the same generative AI tools reshaping the business world.
The initiative — self-funded from two capacity-building grants awarded to faculty members Robin Chen and Ronnie Chen last fall — is tied to two separate research projects requiring students to extract data from lengthy documents. One project examines what the Federal Reserve prioritizes in monetary policy decisions, and the other studies how CEOs apply lessons learned from past business crises to later ones.
It's all about getting students ready for business. And it’s also about making sure students are able to pull data with AI and can be part of the publication research process.
Getting there required more than just computers and research documents. Robin and Ronnie spent roughly six months evaluating AI platforms and securing the tools and approvals necessary for faculty and students to use cutting-edge AI models — including Claude/Claude Code and ChatGPT/ Codex — in research involving university data. The lab stands out nationally for bringing undergraduate students directly into cutting-edge AI research — an opportunity still uncommon at many colleges and universities.
"For most students, they have no idea how to use AI to do research correctly," Robin said. "AI is something that can actually help them improve their thinking,”
Currently, four paid undergraduate research assistants split time between the two projects, prompting AI tools, primarily Claude Code, to pull figures and categorize information from source documents.
But extraction is only a small part of the job. Roughly 80% of the students' time goes toward validation, which means cross-checking AI-generated data against original documents using the same scrutiny they’d apply to any other source.
It's so easy to use AI to extract information, but AI can make up all kinds of things. We are using a scientific process to make sure that each piece of information is the right information. That’s what critical thinking is: How to tell which information is correct and which information is false.
The payoff is already showing up outside the classroom. One student research assistant used AI-driven automation skills from the lab during a summer internship at John Deere, presenting a workflow prototype that earned positive feedback. Robin and Ronnie also see the experience as a strong differentiator for students applying to graduate programs, particularly competitive doctorate or law programs that value hands-on research and data experience.
Now housed in a dedicated space in a computer lab in the Curris Business Building, equipped with new desktops and laptops, the AI Plus Lab is preparing to expand in the coming semester. Robin and Ronnie plan to hire more students and eventually have current researchers train incoming ones, creating a team of AI research experts.
"We want to have a bunch of students who have AI capacity,” Robin said. “Then we can have a team that knows how to use AI and apply their knowledge to future grant-funded research projects.”
