To match the increasing demand for AI-oriented careers, Kent State will offer an artificial intelligence master’s program in fall 2021.

Kent State’s computer science department is now accepting enrollment and will begin admitting students for the graduate program this fall semester.

According to a Kent State Today statement, the program will teach students how to apply AI to healthcare data analysis, intelligent analysis of large-scale data and processes, computer vision and image analysis for diagnostics and many other areas.

The program’s start comes from the AI industry’s recent growth, but Kent has a long history of AI courses.

Arvind Bansal started teaching AI-related courses in Kent State’s computer science department in 1988 and is excited to see the field earn a master’s program.

“It’s a big need in the state of Ohio and the country,” Bansal said, “because the world is going the way of AI.” 

Artificial intelligence has been a part of Kent’s computer science curriculum for decades and has seen consistent growth. In the past five years, the department started teaching courses on intelligent information visualization, wearable devices and much more.

“It’s very much in the research domain, but society is changing fast,” Bansal said. “What’s in the research domain today, undergraduates might be learning in five years.” 

The computer science department currently offers 15 AI-related courses that will be incorporated into the new program along with plenty of new classes.

“It’s not really focused on creating AI,” said Bryce Chaflant, a graduate student in one of Bansal’s AI courses. “It’s more focused on the theories that are already there.” 

The focus of Chaflant’s computer science master’s degree is haptics, which is the use of technology to stimulate the senses of touch and motion. Despite not being directly related to AI, Chalfant can see how the new master’s program might affect his field.

“Anywhere that you could look or think of in computer science, you could probably find some kind of AI,” Chalfant said. 

Chalfant said that improving program run-times will be one of the more foreseeable improvements with AI and computer science.

“If I was just graduating college, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a career path and I saw that they have an AI-specific program, I would definitely look more into the program,” Chalfant said.

The application and admission requirements can be found here.

Zachary Shepherd covers technology. Contact him at [email protected].