Sustainable Arizona Spark Challenge: ASU students tackle sustainability issues in Arizona mining industry with AI solutions

Nearly 100 students, ranging from freshmen to graduate students, gathered at Creativity Commons at Arizona State University (ASU) on Friday, Sept. 6, for the Sustainable Arizona Spark Challenge.

The hackathon was the first of the semester hosted by ASU Enterprise Technology and the Principled Innovation Academy at University College. Students were tasked with addressing the sustainability challenges that Arizona’s mining industries face. Paired in teams of up to six, their work was guided by one central question: “How can you use artificial intelligence (AI) to innovate Arizona’s current mining industry?”

Olivia Herneddo, senior program manager for Community Partners at Enterprise Technology, said the use of AI began in the early stages of workshopping this question.

“I leveraged ChatGPT to work with me through that problem statement and actually think about, well, what's specific and what's actually topical? Using ChatGPT and AI as a thought partner, as a thought accelerator, to move us from the broad into the brilliant,” she said.

Before students were given the green light to brainstorm brilliant ideas, they were equipped with foundational knowledge in two key areas – Arizona mining practices and Principled Innovation.

“It's not just a question of innovating, but how are we innovating?” Herneddo said. “Why are we innovating? With what (are we innovating)? What are the values and the principles that guide and frame all that work?”

Faculty experts began the day by detailing key facts about mining in Arizona – how the economic foundation of the state was built on copper, cattle, cotton, citrus and climate in the early 1900s, and how mining for critical elements like lithium remains essential as the demand for technology increases.

The hackathon challenged students to tie the economic foundation of the state to the global vocabulary and standards of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. These 17 goals represent an urgent call to action, balancing protecting and providing for communities of the present while not compromising the future health of people and the planet.

Students Joseph Raj Vishal, Isaiah Lazaro, Joshua Morgan, Grant Scherling and Skyy Teegarden embraced the hackathon as an opportunity to compete and strengthen skills.

Teegarden, a freshman majoring in entrepreneurship, said while she has used AI tools before for small tasks, she had never used it as the backbone for a problem of such a large scale.

“That’s what college is all about,” she said. “We’re taking new technology and applying it to the real world.”

The team landed on a design they felt would be competitive. They had created a communication platform, which they labeled an AI Agent, that facilitated trust, transparency and social and environmental justice among stakeholders – local communities, mining companies and regulators.

Scherling and Raj Vishal described the idea in detail.

“We’re using an AI agent as an intermediary between mining companies, communities and the general public to increase the availability of data and reduce environmental impact from mining companies while involving the communities that are most impacted by the mining into the conversation,” Scherling said.

“The final solution for this is being able to develop this agent because it's going to be really difficult. It's going to be multiple machine learning models, multiple uses of GPTs and lots of data sets,” Raj Vishal added.

The group spent the remainder of the afternoon creating a visualization of the design and presented their concept on Saturday, Sept. 7, over Zoom. Their idea and execution was so fine-tuned that they took first place and won a $1,500 cash prize. Niko Whitaker, Cam Dressler and Badrinadh Bonu took second and won $1,000, while Nysa Jain and Asmi Kachare placed third and won $500.

“Six teams total walk away with actual prize money,” Herneddo said. “What does everybody else walk away with? It's not just a participation award, it is an investment. So whether it’s subject matter experts that they get to network with, or just walking away with deeper, specific knowledge about their time and their place on this planet.”

Herneddo encouraged students to connect with ASU Changemaker Central to further explore their ideas once the hackathon concludes.

“Even if your idea doesn't make it past the prize-winning round here, it does not die,” she said. “Take your idea, invest in it, nurture it. There's other avenues to invest and get your idea in front of an audience for feedback. Don't let it die here. This is not a graveyard.”