Using strategic initiative funds from the College of Communication and Information, the School of Information Sciences (SIS) created a new facility and introduced new technology to the college in its iLab in 2024. The iLab is equipped with high-performance workstations, robots, digitization equipment, and virtual reality headsets, making it a space where teams of students, faculty, and collaborators can delve into complex issues or enjoy a game of Mario Kart.
“Our brand-new iLab is where students can dive deep into the world of data analytics, interact with social robots, and explore virtual reality, among other things. It’s a hands-on experience like no other,” said SIS Director Abebe Rorissa. “The iLab is meant to lay the foundation for a state-of-the-art collaboration hub for research, teaching, learning, development, and innovation.”
Rohit Gunti, a third-year PhD student specializing in information sciences, has utilized the lab for several projects, including his work on bird classification. He participated in a competition involving machine learning and classification, focusing on the classification of bird calls. Gunti worked on identifying various bird species based on random audio clips of their calls and successfully developed a system to detect the types. He programmed and wrote a script for identifying the bird species in the test set.
The iLab computers are high-performance workstations capable of processing data much faster than any regular laptop or desktop computer. Gunti had hundreds of files that needed to be classified, a task that would have taken days without the help of the iLab. With the iLab, Gunti created a program to classify bird calls while simultaneously working on other projects in a matter of hours.
SIS Assistant Professor Jiangen He has also been working on a robot that will be featured in the iLab. He and Gunti are building a program where the robot can alter its audio to mimic different accents based on geographic location. They plan to conduct pre-training tasks and experiments with undergraduate students to explore the theoretical foundations of their work.
“The iLab is a casual space where everyone, especially information sciences student clubs and organizations, graduate students, and undergraduate students can meet for various research, teaching, and learning activities, have fun, and spend time with like-minded individuals to discuss ideas or their coursework,” Gunti said.
The iLab also has a digital board where students can collaborate, including with virtual teams, virtual reality headsets, and chairs designed specifically for gaming and computer use. It is a space where students can come for fun, which some members of the UTK eSports team are already doing, or for educational purposes.
It is the hope that the iLab will be a facility that enables the SIS and CCI community to partner with national labs, industry, and government agencies to engage in research, service, and development activities in areas such as information sciences, large data science, user experience design, artificial intelligence, information integrity, and cybersecurity. The iLab will be made available to outside partners to establish and sustain these collaborations through targeted memoranda of understanding and similar arrangements.
