Artificial intelligence has integrated into nearly all sectors of society, requiring thoughtful and groundbreaking approaches to implement new technologies and accelerate scientific discovery. The Tickle College of Engineering (TCE) is helping position the University of Tennessee as a hub for applied high-impact AI innovation.
From materials discovery to healthcare to agriculture, TCE is at the forefront of the AI revolution. Research being done across every department in the college has the potential to improve lives, create jobs, and make the world safer while educating the field’s future workforce.
Hundreds of TCE professors and students are leveraging AI tools for problem-solving and process optimization while emphasizing ethical and community-centered outcomes. They have integrated AI into workflows to improve efficiency, safety, maintenance, and forecasting. They are creating tools to responsibly assimilate AI into engineering processes to manufacture components and parts that drive everyday life.
“As artificial intelligence rapidly evolves, the Tickle College of Engineering is investing in not only AI-related research and growing its tremendous faculty, but we are also rapidly modernizing our curriculum and college operations,” said TCE Dean Matthew Mench, the Wayne T. Davis Dean’s Chair of the college. “What we have learned is, while AI can accelerate lab discovery and foundational learning, it also heightens the need for critical thinking, innovation, experiential learning, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. TCE remains committed to world-class research and a modernized engineering education that prepares graduates to lead in the age of AI.”
Through multidisciplinary projects on campus, TCE is helping to develop and deploy AI solutions that advance the prosperity and well-being of communities and organizations throughout the state of Tennessee and beyond. TCE’s research and industry collaborations are contributing to growth in key economic sectors, including nuclear energy and security, advanced manufacturing, agriculture and forestry, healthcare, and mobility.
As part AI Tennessee, which the university launched to develop and deploy AI solutions that advance the health and prosperity of communities and organizations throughout Tennessee, UT developed AI TechX. The initiative was created to empower Tennessee communities and industry partners to adopt AI technologies that enable high-quality job creation and economic growth.
Eight of the nine inaugural projects selected for AI TechX funding last year involved engineering faculty, including using AI and sensor technologies to improve pedestrian safety, harnessing AI and quantum computing technologies in geospatial intelligence for national defense applications, and developing AI systems and methodologies for real-time quality inspection in automotive production lines.
“The Tickle College of Engineering has been an extremely good collaborator when it comes to multidisciplinary partnerships with other groups across campus,” said Caleb Knight, director of AI TechX. “Holistically, we’re counting on engineering to be willing to partner with other departments, like the College of Social Work, Haslam College of Business, Herbert College of Agriculture—anywhere where there is domain expertise that can leverage AI but doesn’t have AI expertise. Engineering faculty have that core knowledge around AI to help.”
ISE’s essential contributions
The Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) has played a vital part in keeping TCE at the forefront of AI innovation.
Professor Xueping Li, Assistant Professor Bing Yao, and Joint Adjunct Assistant Professor Tom Berg are using AI/ML to provide treatment plans to breast cancer patients more quickly by analyzing pathology reports and other clinical records to determine how much breast cancer is in the body.
“If you were to diagnose cancer stages manually from these 300,000 pages—if you did it by hand, and you didn’t eat and didn’t sleep—it would take about 14 years,” Li said. “With these algorithms, we were able to do it in under one hour.”
Yao is also using advanced machine learning techniques to develop new surgical simulation and optimization tools to personalize treatment for atrial fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat disorder caused by misfiring cardiac nerves.
Assistant Professor Beau Schelble is researching “AI teammates,” which are AI-powered agents designed to act as digital team members rather than simple chatbots. In a cooperative research agreement with the Army Research Office, Schelble’s lab is studying human-compromised AI dynamics for the first time and creating guidelines for effectively preventing, identifying, and recovering from attacks that compromise AI teammates. The results could revolutionize decision-making in manufacturing, nuclear energy, disaster recovery, healthcare, and more.
In a project that could position UT as a leader in the space of student funding, professors and students within ISE are collaborating with several TCE administrators to use AI to improve the efficiency, agility, and effectiveness of scholarship allocation at UT by having AI automate parts of the process that are more mundane while preserving staff control and trust.
“The work is about finding better ways to connect our students with the scholarship support available to them, while also making sure we are thoughtful stewards of those resources. The contributions from our Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering have been a real strength of the work,” said Michael Danquah, TCE’s Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs. “Faculty and students are bringing their expertise in AI, data, and systems thinking to a challenge that matters to the college operation, and they are helping us build something that can have a meaningful and lasting impact.”
Student Spotlights
Carson Bogue
Graduate Research Assistant, ISE
Bogue graduated in the spring of 2026 and has remained at UT to pursue his master’s degree. He’s worked on projects involving human-AI teaming and using AI for smart manufacturing. His current research is focused on using AI and machine learning to help veterans suffering from Parkinson’s disease by creating algorithms powered by wearable watch data that can aid in their treatment.
“My experience at UT has been by giving me hands-on experience with AI projects. I have things I can point to and say, ‘I’ve worked in this capacity on AI and machine learning,’ rather than just hoping a company trusts me to learn it.”
Lilliana York
Junior, ISE
York is getting practical research experience in AI as an undergraduate at UT. She is currently assisting a PhD student with agent-based disaster modeling, where they are using AI and machine learning to simulate how people react during a disaster. Her research focuses on identifying behavioral patterns across different personas and then using the data to train models to help first responders predict how specific groups might behave.
“My experience at UT has revealed how large the realm of AI is. Even my professors are only scratching the surface of what AI can help them develop and accomplish.”