Students and presenters at the OpenAI visit

OpenAI joins ASU on campus to advance strategic collaboration

JOYCELYN MUÑOZ

January 28, 2026

Driven by a commitment to collaborate early with industry leaders, Arizona State University welcomed OpenAI’s education and health leadership to campus last week to advance strategic conversations around learning outcomes, certifications and supporting health.

The visit marks two years since ASU inked a flagship collaboration with OpenAI, and has since activated nearly 700 projects through its AI Innovation Challenge that span across academics, research and work.

ASU’s collaboration with OpenAI is built on shared learning: where each partner contributes experiences, tests new approaches, shares best practices and insights to help explore new and innovative ways to use AI – across generative, multimodal and, now, agentic AI capabilities.

Over three days, ASU Enterprise Technology hosted a series of sessions and workshops with the intent of co-sharing knowledge across the organizations. During these sessions, ASU faculty, students and staff highlighted what they’ve learned about designing custom AI experiences, everyday AI use and developing agentic AI experiences.

OpenAI’s Vice President of Education Leah Belsky and Dr. Nate Gross, who leads the company’s healthcare strategy, were onsite as part of the discussions.

During the visit, ASU students got an early look at new OpenAI tools, and had the opportunity to share how they themselves use AI in their academic and personal lives.

The teams at OpenAI presented detailed workshops on ChatGPT Edu and gave a first look at their new OpenAI Certifications, which they announced in December 2025. ASU will be among the first to test and provide feedback on the three-part certification program this spring.

Student session surfaces insights

ASU students got an early look at new OpenAI features set to launch soon to higher education institutions, with tools designed specifically for students, researchers and learners.

More than 80 students, including interns with the university’s AI Acceleration team and AI Scholars, joined the OpenAI demonstration at the ASU Creativity Commons on January 21.

The demonstration was led by OpenAI team members Jayna Devani, Education Lead, Charmaine Pek, AI Deployment Manager, and Keelan Schule, Solutions Engineer.

Last October, ASU announced ChatGPT Edu was available to faculty, staff and students at no charge to the individual.

“We built ChatGPT Edu because we wanted to provide a secure, functional version of ChatGPT built for teaching and learning. If you’re a student, you should easily be able to build a prototype or dream up a startup idea in Canvas, or engage with course material through a custom GPT without hitting message limits,” Devani said. “So, this is really the version that is built for that industrial use.”

According to OpenAI, students are ChatGPT’s top users, with their primary use case being learning. Nearly all students in the audience indicated that they had used ChatGPT within the past seven days.

When asked what kind of tools could make their lives easier, students shared several potential use cases of their own.

“I could use something to help me cook better meals,” one student said. “I wish I had something to help get me out of bed in the morning,” another said. “Something that would help me is some kind of background tracker, something to help me keep everything organized,” another student called out.

AI Acceleration intern SeonLin Kim noted the importance of staying engaged in the tech space, embracing new technologies and diving into new tools, especially when starting a career.

“Having flexible thoughts on new services, like with AI, and encouraging new thinking processes is important,” Kim said. “Not being afraid about the new stuff, but wanting to learn something about it. Just giving it a shot is important.”

As OpenAI looks to the future, they are scaling their platform for students and learners, and advancing research on how far AI can go to support education, which is far from complete.

Additional sessions brought together groups across ASU’s Learning Enterprise and ASU Health, both of which are areas that ASU plans to lead in developing AI systems that help improve learning and health outcomes.

“Things are happening very fast,” Devani said. “This technology is improving very quickly, and one of the best ways to get familiar with AI is to use it. What we're really hoping to do is to create and rapidly put this technology out in the world to get real feedback and make it better.”