Kickoff

Kickoff - AI Biz Club First Virtual Meeting Monday, August 4, 2025 Icebreaker Games & AI Trivia The AI Biz Club hosted its first-ever virtual meeting, opened by Secretary Dhwani Singh, who welcomed attendees and walked through the agenda. The session kicked off with light-hearted icebreaker questions and games, helping new and returning students connect informally and setting the tone for an engaging, collaborative community. Club Vision & Mission - Prof. Ashim Bose Prof. Ashim Bose shared that the AI in Business Club was founded to give UTD students a safe, collaborative space to explore and apply AI strategically and ethically. The vision: empower students to critically engage with AI, understand its implications, and build solutions that create real-world value - focused on both the business impact of AI and the business of AI itself. The mission is fourfold: educate students through workshops, lectures, and hands-on projects; connect them with industry experts, alumni, and researchers; innovate through interdisciplinary collaboration across marketing, finance, HR, operations, and strategy; and promote responsible AI through dialogue on ethics, fairness, and social impact. "We're building a community where curiosity meets business insight - and where integrity drives innovation." Fall 2025 Capstone Preview Prof. Bose previewed the introduction of formalized capstone projects sponsored by real companies across healthcare, commercial real estate, supply chain, and financial services. Sponsors provide problem statements, domain insights, and (where possible) real data - giving students practical AI-focused challenges to tackle. Journey from Storytelling to AI - President Ashwin Thomas Ashwin shared his journey from filmmaking and storytelling to design, marketing, and ultimately product management and AI. Tools like Midjourney and ChatGPT sparked his desire to understand the technology beyond just using it. With no coding background, he built his first AI prototype in Prof. Bose's "AI in Business" class - and co-founded AI Biz to give others the same path. Meet the Core Team - Ashwin Thomas - President - Rushil Srivastava - VP (AI Engineer at Avenue) - Dhwani Singh - Secretary (events & engagement) - Tejas Deshkulkarni & Abhinav Nallamalli - Events Officers - Priyanka Bhatla - Outreach Officer - Ramya Javvadi & Venkat Turlapati - Technology Officers - Vaishnavi Iyer & Drushti Shetty - Industry Liaisons - Keertana Sreeramareddy - Recruitment Officer The Three Pillars Ashwin laid out the club's three pillars: Building Foundation (generative models, AI agents, fundamentals), Practical Experience (hackathons and project-based collaborations with external partners), and Industry Connections (expert panels and networking events). Project Spotlight: Cursor - Technology Officer Venkat Turlapati Venkat demoed Cursor, the AI-enhanced IDE built on VS Code, building a weather app in under 8 minutes with Flutter and AI-generated code. He also showcased his personal project SSP (Self-Supervised Browsing) - an automation tool using Gemini 2.5 Flash to book hotels and shop online securely. Compared to $300/month alternatives, his solution runs at under $1 for 200 requests with added security from local wallets and API key vaults. Quiz Winners & Upcoming Events Quiz winners were announced at the end of the session. The team previewed Cometville on August 27th - UTD's largest student org fair - and confirmed that future events would lean toward in-person gatherings to deepen the community.