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As мÓÆÂÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±'s inaugural Marion Porter Chair, 's mission is clear: to enhance artificial intelligence (AI) and business analytics (BA) within the College of Business and Public Policy (CBPP) and across Alaska, fostering faculty and student success while addressing community needs through research, innovation, curriculum development and interdisciplinary collaborations.

"The motivation behind the mission statement is to share the endowment, not only for my own personal research and conferences and publications, but with the college to really enhance it, and moving beyond just CBPP eventually, but at least starting here and getting a really good thought-out plan in place," said Wisniewski, who is known for her expertise in AI, strategic computing, science, entrepreneurship and inventions.

Her strategy for achieving this vision focuses on five pillars: enhancing student learning experiences, collaboration across departments, encouraging research and curriculum development, hosting seminars and webinars on topics in AI and exploring federal grant opportunities.

"I feel our students really need a strong foundation in AI," said Wisniewski. "They don't have to know how to code a neural network necessarily, but they should understand how to use it and what role it could play in their career endeavors, whether it be business or other areas."

She plans to use AI to enhance student learning  by sponsoring a contest for the portfolio management course where student teams will compete against each other and AI to see who performs better, awarding prize money to the best team. She also foresees providing support and financial incentives for students who attend a conference focused on AI and BA or demonstrate how they've used AI in their coursework assignments.

To encourage departments within CBPP and across мÓÆÂÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½± to collaborate on AI topics, Wisniewski has been talking with faculty about various applications for AI in their courses and opportunities to use the Alaska Data Science & AI Lab (ADSAIL), which Wisniewski co-founded in 2019 with College of Engineering Dean Kenrick Mock and support from McKinley Capital Management. From virtual reality (VR) simulations to eye-tracking technology and a chess-playing robot, the lab offers a dynamic environment for  researching and developing innovative solutions to real-world challenges. She envisions countless opportunities to use it not just at мÓÆÂÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½± but for projects in Anchorage and throughout Alaska. One example is using the lab's HoloLens 2, an untethered headset combining VR and augmented reality, to create and utilize a digital twin.

"Suppose you wanted to do urban planning for Anchorage, and you really want to see how things are interconnected — everything from more housing to how are you going to provide the electrical power, how are you going to provide the water, how are you going to provide a lot of the necessities and utilities that are necessary," said Wisniewski, detailing how a digital twin could simulate an environment, allowing people to run different situations and scenarios on the virtual version before enacting them in the physical space. Cordova, she noted, is one Alaska community already .

Digital twins also happened to be the topic for a previous webinar in Wisniewski's AI series, which she plans to expand under the endowment. The next event in the series (the first in-person offering since it launched in 2020) will feature on March 1 at noon.

The Marion Porter Chair endowment is an estate gift from Frances B. Mlakar in honor of Marion Jean Barnes Porter, a pioneering accountant and estate planner. It is one of four endowed chairs or professorships in CBPP, along with the Rasmuson Chair of Economics, William H. Seward Chair in International Finance and Weidner Chair in Business Management.