Navigating the course calendar and endless university websites to find course requirements, registration deadlines, and university policies can be challenging for students.

To ease the burden and to simplify the complexities of policy and regulations across distributed information sources, the Faculty of Science sought guidance from the UBC Cloud Innovation Centre (UBC CIC) on their exploration into using Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a potential solution

What began as a request for advice soon evolved into a successful collaboration. Prof. James Charbonneau, Associate Dean, Students for the Faculty of Science, highlighted the natural synergy between their needs and UBC CIC’s expertise:

“We reached out to the CIC for advice on what LLMs we should be exploring and it turns out they were interested in working on a very similar project,” he explained. “With the developer team, access to cutting-edge tools, and the professional management of developers, the project got way further than we would have been able to alone.”

This collaboration led to the creation of the Student Advising Assistant—a cutting-edge solution developed by the UBC CIC, powered byAmazon Web Services (AWS). With its advanced capabilities, the tool has the potential for far-reaching impact. The tool leverages advanced AI to deliver fast, accurate responses to students’ academic questions, helping them navigate their university experience with ease.

“Imagine a first-year student who misses an exam due to illness,” says Aman Prakash, a third-year computer engineering student and developer at the CIC. “Instead of searching university websites—or waiting for an available advisor—they can simply ask the tool, ‘What do I do if I miss an exam?’ or ‘What electives do I need for first-year biology?’ and receive a clear, actionable answer.”

There’s no doubt the advising assistant will save time and reduce stress for students, especially during high-pressure periods like registration and exams. Going beyond simple search engines, the AI-powered system understands and contextualizes queries using a large language model hosted on Bedrock, Amazon’s cloud-based suite of AI solutions.

“Amazon Bedrock has been a game-changer,” Aman notes. “It’s serverless, so we don’t have to worry about infrastructure, and it lets us easily switch between different large language models to find the best fit for our needs.”

The UBC CIC has “solution architects” from UBC and AWS, experts on Amazon Web Services, who provide invaluable guidance, helping student developers navigate AI technologies and optimize their projects. These elements empower student developers like Aman to experiment, iterate, and deploy solutions rapidly.

“Their advice sped up my learning curve significantly,” Aman says.

The Student Advising Assistant aligns with the university’s commitment to innovation and demonstrates the impact of FORWARD, the campaign for UBC, in advancing teaching, learning, and research.

As the University and others explore the tool’s applications, its impact could extend beyond the Faculty of Science, transforming how academic advising is delivered across, and beyond, UBC. On a personal note, Aman’s time at CIC has been transformative for him too.

“This experience has solidified my passion for working at the intersection of AI and cloud computing,” says Aman. “It’s rewarding to create products that not only solve real problems but also have the potential to inspire innovation across the university.”

Prof. Charbonneau agrees: “It has been an amazing collaboration.”