“Study Buddy”
Group one, which includes ASU students Mariam Serghat, Abraham Lozano Serna, Mudi Erhueh and Alex Ababu, pitched “Study Buddy”, an AI-powered companion that creates a personalized, guided experience for students via Canvas. Study Buddy eliminates hours of prep so students can get straight to studying.
“It’s the day before an exam,” Serghat said. “You’re cramming, there’s an overwhelming amount of material to sort through, and you’re unsure of what you’re struggling with and what you might be tested on. You spend hours just trying to organize everything, and then you finally start studying, and now you’re short on time.”
By pulling from a student’s Canvas portal, the agent will pinpoint knowledge gaps and generate an individualized study experience.
Mental Health Platform
Group two, made up of Vibhor Bhatia, Nkesa Muso, Faraj Tessilimi and Seon Min Kim, presented a concept for a proactive ASU mental health platform that identifies needs earlier. It addresses AI-gathered data insights to tackle the current reliance on student self-referral.
Using indicators, including academic performance and social engagement, the platform would leverage AI to anticipate when a student may need services. By drawing from the group’s personal experiences, they emphasized a system that reaches students before they feel the need to take action.
“We saw that mental healthcare at ASU was very much a reactive system, and we saw that if someone is in a position that they do need a lot of help, they're not usually in the right state of mind to actually be able to put in the steps of reaching out,” Bhatia said. “We thought a good way to try and surpass that would be creating a sense of predictive system.”
“Connecting With People Who Shape a Lifetime”
Sai Amulya Pingili, Tinotenda Muponda, Powj Nyibong and Daniel Alphayo of group three introduced “Connecting With People Who Shape a Lifetime”, an AI-powered launchpad for student entrepreneurs navigating early-stage ideas.
“I have had an idea for a student organization, but had no idea who else would be interested, how to find an advisor or if the solution would have an impact on the ASU community,” Nyibong said. “ But the issue wasn't that there wasn’t an idea – there was no momentum.”
The platform will use AI to connect student innovators with professionals, mentors and resources to help them move their ideas from concepts to execution opportunities.
Social Engagement Platform
Group four’s Prince Rwamatwara, Shamiim Namulema, Anitah Murungi and Abhishekraman Sethuraman pitched their idea for a centralized social engagement platform designed to support both academic and campus life.
From keeping track of real-time office hours to campus events, the platform would be particularly helpful for students who travel between different ASU campuses, using AI to stay up-to-date.
“If you go to another campus and you’re kind of unfamiliar with it, you can see there’s all these things happening,” Rwamatwara said. “Games, events, you can book study rooms – and, currently, these services are scattered around. So the idea is to centralize everything.”
Developing a pitch to a prototype
Each group will have three weeks to develop their pitches using AI resources, before presenting their finished prototype.
The selected project will influence and help guide the direction of the AI Acceleration team, with the potential to inform future projects.
“This is a new group of students that started in June of 2025, and seeing them progress over time has really been so amazing,” said Timoh. “I'm so excited to see how they're going to build their ideas into fruition and see how this can shape the future of the next project our team is going to work on.”