Meet the grads: For WVU senior, mastering AI is part of the business plan
Grace Terlion is preparing to graduate from the WVU John Chambers College of Business and Economics with expertise in supply chain management, data analytics and applied AI. (WVU Photo/Zakariah Issah)
In one of her supply chain classes at West Virginia University, Grace Terlion took a field trip to Toyota Motor Manufacturing in Putnam County.
“At Toyota, we got to see all the artificial intelligence features they had and all the different bots that were going around. It’s such a big company, so the impact of those technologies has to be massive. I’ve never seen anything like that, and it was super cool,” she said.
“Industries look completely different than they did just three years ago in terms of AI. It’s complex, and we have to be able to think on our toes and adapt. Now robots are working in factories, minimizing risk and injuries for humans and increasing efficiency. AI isn’t going away. It’s something we have to embrace, and that starts with figuring out the most efficient way to use it. So I decided to take classes to understand how it actually works.”
Grace Terlion, senior supply chain management major at WVU, has expanded her academic interests through coursework in data analytics and applied artificial intelligence. (WVU Photo/Zakariah Issah)
A Wisconsin native, Terlion had chosen WVU for the chance to row competitively. Now a senior set to graduate in May, she serves as one of the rowing team’s coxswains — “the brains of the boat,” she said.
“I love my rowing coaches, and I really enjoy the people I’m on the team with. We’re a very unique group. People who are involved in rowing tend to be very mentally tough, because it is so grueling.”
Terlion likes a challenge on and off the water, she said. She’d come to the WVU John Chambers College of Business and Economics with a strong interest in supply chains and no experience as a programmer or working with data. But she broadened her interests when her faculty mentors in the Department of Management Information Systems and Supply Chains urged her to explore a minor in data analytics.
As one of the coxswains for the WVU rowing team, Grace Terlion helps guide her crew with strategy, communication and split-second decision making on the water. (Submitted Photo)
“The most interesting part of data analytics for me is the coding,” Terlion said. “It’s very satisfying to finally get a code to run. It can be nitpicky, trying to find the bug and then getting it to work. It’s hard, so I find it entertaining.”
Terlion’s explorations of the world of coding and data drew her to a game-changing course with Bin Liu, associate professor in the newly launched WVU Chambers College program in applied AI and data analytics.
“Grace took my AI and Machine Learning class, which starts with more conventional machine-learning, gets into deep-learning, and finally goes into large-scale foundation models,” Liu said.
“Students are always excited about generative AI like ChatGPT, but I ask them to go back and master basic concepts in machine-learning. Because while ChatGPT is really cool, what if we have data that we cannot share with it due to security concerns? Then we need to train a machine-learning model ourselves, and we need to understand the steps that got us to today’s AI technology.”
Terlion said she found Liu’s class “fascinating” for its behind-the-scenes access to the mysteries of deep-learning models.
Grace Terlion, graduating senior in supply chain management in the WVU Chambers College (WVU Photo/Zakariah Issah)
“Bin showed us how deep-learning libraries actually work and the extent of the code lines,” Terlion said. “There are multiple ‘hidden layers’ for training in that platform, and being able to see that there could be hundreds of layers behind one single deep neural network model was mind-blowing for me.”
Under Liu’s supervision, Terlion was soon engaged in building a machine-learning model to predict housing prices in the Pittsburgh area.
“I had 79 variables, from the number of bedrooms and bathrooms to square footage and whether there was an attached or detached garage,” she explained. “The skills I learned could be very useful to companies like the one I interned with in Pittsburgh, Ebara Elliott Energy. We use AI there, and the whole company is working to understand it and expand it.”
She added, “In my opinion, for business students, expertise in AI should be a necessity, because the biggest concern with AI right now is using it incorrectly, thinking of it as a coworker rather than a tool, allowing it to make decisions for us. But I’ve definitely been sitting in my AI classes at WVU thinking, ‘Oh, this will be helpful to me in my job.’ I’m excited to use what I’ve learned.”
Terlion, on a trip in Florence, Italy (Submitted Photo)
That’s the idea, Liu said, and it’s what sets the AI program at WVU apart.
“At the Chambers College, we focus on the real application of AI,” Liu said. “Students have the opportunity to study AI and data science, to be part of Data Driven West Virginia, and to work with industry partners. This is very different from computer science programs, where they may dive into different algorithms, for example, in greater depth. But our students, such as Grace, focus more on problem solving.”
Terlion said her professional goal is to continue to explore the areas that have blown her mind as a student.
“I’m hoping to focus in my career on working with the data sets of supply chains. I’ve really come to love working with data at WVU, as well as coding. For me getting good at programming languages happened when I started to understand the background of the code, what is needed in the platform, rather than trying to memorize everything. That’s what really helped,” she said, “and it’s what made me enjoy it.”
-WVU-