Four weeks of study culminated at UF’s Reitz Union on Thursday for nearly 100 high schoolers from across the state competing in the Powering the Community: Artificial Intelligence Design Contest.  

Split into 20 teams, the students presented their final project, showing how they’d design a smart power grid for their communities.  

Dr. Nancy Ruzycki, instructional associate professor, helped launch the project with Dr. Krista Dulany Chisholm in 2022. Thursday’s contest marks the third iteration, but it’s also the first held at UF and with multiple school districts involved.  

Ruzycki said each team is paired with a UF undergraduate student and each week the teams must produce a deliverable. She said the high schoolers research how much power businesses and surrounding residences consume, where power is coming from and other generation possibilities. 

Then, the students create the smart grid and must decide who gets power first if a natural disaster were to strike—first responders, gas stations, grocery stores, utility companies and the list continues. 

“If they worked for a company like Duke Energy, they would have an [artificial intelligence] make those decisions,” Ruzycki said. “They’re acting as the AI in this case by making those decisions, so they understand how if they worked for a company, they would have to design their AI system to deliver energy.” 

Some teams factored in buildings with their own generators that could last longer with a damaged grid, and teams differed on who should fit under the highest level of importance.  

After presentations, a panel of judges and the audience could ask questions.  

Judges came from Duke Energy, which granted the funds to UF for the contest and a similar middle school contest for the spring.  

The contest dovetails into other work that Ruzycki and UF have done to increase learning of artificial intelligence in K-12 schools. She and others created the AI framework for the state’s standards in K-12, and Ruzycki said the team wanted a contest or program to attract students to take the courses at their schools. 

“We feel that just like digital literacy, everyone needs to have an understanding of AI literacy,” Ruzycki said. 

Ruzycki said the AI field changes rapidly, preventing a textbook from leaving the printing press before becoming outdated. The UF team created a core curriculum class in Canvas, an online learning platform, that allows teachers to download resources that the university can update as needed. 

Besides AI literacy, the contest also introduces students to the energy sector as a possible career path.  

Dr. Ted Kury, director of energy studies at UF’s Public Utility Research Center, gave a keynote address before the presentations. He said students interested in utilities and energy now have a head start.  

“If you’re going into the power sector, you probably now know more about the sector than 99% of the people out there,” Kury said. 

He added that the students have also begun hitting their heads against the “four unfortunate realities” that researchers, governments and utilities wrestle with daily: utilizing electricity for anything comes with a cost, not using electricity also has an impact on the environment, delivering service and the people pay for everything. 

Teams came from Alachua, Marion, Lake, Sumter, Wakulla, Hernando, Citrus, and Suwannee counties to participate. 

Ruzycki said their UF student mentors would meet with the teams and give tours of campus along with a Q&A panel about the university, which is making AI a major area of emphasis under new President Ben Sasse.  

“I think it sets up a nice model for students, especially from some of our more rural schools and districts, to see that they also have a pathway to a university like University of Florida,” Ruzycki said. 

She added that small grants can have a large impact.  

“People sometimes think, ‘Oh, I can’t give a million dollars. Like, my money is not gonna go anywhere’,” Ruzycki said.  

She noted that the Duke Energy grant of only $25,000 was enough to fund both the high school competition and the middle school competition in the spring, which she hopes will attract 150 students.