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Wed, 11 Sep 2019 20:25:28 +0000

Resilient Resumes team places third in Nittany AI Challenge admin Wed, 09/11/2019 - 16:25
Brad Zdenek, innovation strategist for the Nittany AI Alliance; Ethan Adams, Austin Tucker, Bryan Cruz Ullao, Ian Morrissey and Amie Croteau created Resilient Resumes; Daren Coudriet, director for the Nittany AI Alliance and Tracey Huston, vice president for Penn State Outreach.
Credit: Penn State Expand September 11, 2019 Lisa Baldi
WYOMISSING, Pa. — The Resilient Resumes team took third place in the Nittany AI Challenge, held at Penn State University Park campus on September 10, 2019. The team received $5,000 from Nittany AI Alliance for their web application designed to walk the user through the resume creation process.

The Resilient Resumes team is comprised of project lead Amie Croteau, an Information Sciences and Technology (IST) major; Ethan Adams, IST and Security and Risk Analysis (SRA); and Ian Morrissey, SRA with a minor in IST–all three students at Penn State Berks. They are joined by Bryan Cruz, a Computer Science major at Penn State Harrisburg and Austin Tucker an IST and SRA major from University Park. Faculty advisers are Dr. Abdullah Konak, Professor of IST, and Dr. Yuan Xue, Assistant Professor of IST, both from Penn State Berks.

Appropriately named Resilient Resumes, the team developed a web application designed to walk the user through the resume creation process, asking guided questions to ensure that all necessary information has been included. Then the resume will be analyzed utilizing artificial intelligence and the application will output recommendations to help the user improve various features in the resume.

“The idea came about from brainstorming [for the Nittany AI Challenge] and frankly frustration from trying to get an internship,” explains Croteau. “I'm a non-traditional student, so my resume looked very different. I wanted it to be really good before I sat down with Career Services.

“We wanted to create a tool that can give students feedback immediately after writing their resume and confidence when they are applying for an internship or job. That's where Resilient Resumes was born.”

The competition finals were judged by 38 reviewers from across the University, as well as national technology companies and local start-ups including Oracle, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.

Professor Konak explains the value of this project to students. “Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies are changing the world in a way that we have not seen since the widespread use of the Internet. There is a tremendous interest in these technologies among our students. With this project and some other initiatives at Penn State Berks, we aim to create research-based experiential learning experiences for our students.”

This initiative is supported by the Frederick H. and Austra Gaige Fund to Support Innovation and an Institute of CyberScience Seed Grant.