Research Focus SCSU
Research Focus:
Education and Workforce Development Focus: Artificial
Intelligence (AI) For All Majors At South Carolina State University
Dr. Nikunja Swain (Left) is a Professor and Chair of the Computer Science and Mathematics Department and Executive Director of the National Center of Excellence in Cybersecurity (NCAE-C) at South Carolina State University (SCSU). He serves as the senior personnel and institutional lead for ADAPT in SC at SCSU. Dr. Biswajit Biswal (Second from Left) is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at SCSU. Prof. Janmejay Mohanty (Third from Left) is an instructor in cybersecurity at SCSU. Mr. Xiaomao Liu (Right) is the System Administrator and adjunct faculty in Computer Science at SCSU.
The team’s educational and workforce development activities focus on providing AI education to all majors at the university through freely available AI courseware from IBM, involving students in AI competitions, providing students with summer research experience in AI applications, and enhancing faculty knowledge base in AI and related topics through the IBM Teach the Teacher (T3) program.
Infusing IBM AI short-course modules into existing courses – The IBM short-course module typically lasts 3 to 4 hours, and the general structure of an IBM course module is shown in Figure 1.
The AI module is offered as part of South Carolinas State University’s (SCSU) “CS 150 – Computer Technology” course, a General Education Course required of all majors except CS and Mathematics majors. The AI module is titled Getting Started with Artificial Intelligence and comprises three components: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Introduction to Large Language Models, and Mastering the Art of Prompting. The module is self-paced, with assistance from the instructor. This activity is treated as a graded assignment for the course. Upon completing the module, students may take a badge exam to earn a Digital Badge in AI.
Additionally, SCSU has incorporated the IBM AI short-course module into a few other courses in their Engineering Computer Science and Cybersecurity curriculum. These courses are CS 151 – Introduction to Computer Science, CS 304 Intro. To Computer Organization, M 410 Numerical Analysis, M 411 Numerical Analysis II, CS 444 Capstone Prof. Development & Assessment, CS 460 Senior Project, MET 425, TRP 550 Transportation Systems Analysis and Design, and CSY 503 Legal and Ethical Issues in Computing.
Students are required to complete a module survey after the completion of the course. Over the last 3 years, 1,000+ students have completed the IBM AI course module. The overall satisfaction rate among students and faculty with various components of this course is over 90%. Please click here for the survey results from Fall 2025 and Spring 2026.
Other courses in the curriculum – The Computer Science and Cybersecurity curriculum includes standalone courses on AI concepts and applications, including CS 323 – Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (advanced elective), CSY 445 – AI/ML (Elective), and CSY 506 – Introduction to Data Analytics. Students are introduced to principles of AI and its application through these courses.
Involving students in AI competitions – Undergraduate and Graduate students are encouraged to participate. During Spring, the team mentored a graduate student group and an undergraduate student group in the South Carolina State University Institute of Business, Environment, Communication & Transportation (BECT) AI competition. They won the first and second positions, respectively.
Summer Research Experience for Undergraduate Students – The team conducts seven- to eight-week summer research internships for the computer science and cybersecurity majors on AI and its application to health science and cybersecurity. Through this internship, students are exposed to a webinar series on AI and its applications by Clemson University, IBM short courses on Generative AI and Agentic AI, Python programming in Google Colab, Google AI Studio, and practical projects in Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Agentic AI related to AI and Cybersecurity. The titles of projects from Summer 2025 are
1. Deep Learning-Based Automated Classification of Skin Lesions: A Study Using the HAM10000 Dermatoscopic Image Dataset
2. Conversational Retrieval-Augmented Generation for FHIR Patient Data: Enabling Natural Language Cohort Querying and Summarization
3. Developing a User-Friendly Machine Learning Tool for Heart Disease Risk Forecasting
These posters were presented at the ADMI Symposium, 2026, March 26-29, Claflin University, Orangeburg, SC; the 2026 SC EPSCoR State Conference, April 10, Columbia, SC; the CAE in Cybersecurity Community Symposium, 2026, April 28-30, Pittsburgh, PA; and the STEM-T Showcase, South Carolina State University, March 18, 2026.
Currently, the interns are working on the following projects:
1. MediAgent: Symbolic Clinical Intelligence & Registry Assistant
2. CyberGuard AI: Autonomous Log Forensics & Threat Hunting Agent
Enhancing the faculty knowledge base in AI: The faculty is encouraged to participate in a range of free AI and Machine Learning activities through SCSU’s existing partnerships with IBM, AWS, and NVIDIA. While some faculty have participated in the IBM T3 program and have received instructor certificates in AI, Machine Learning, Cloud Computing, Data Science, and Other Areas, others are participating in AWS and Google AI activities.
Conclusion: AI and cybersecurity courses offered through the IBM SkillsBuild program provided all majors at the institution with a mix of theoretical knowledge and practical skills, making them a fantastic initiative to incorporate into the curriculum. This initiative has enabled many of the students to earn AI certificates, obtain micro-internships in AI and cybersecurity, and earn while learning. The faculty were able to broaden their knowledge base and receive IBM \Digital Badges. The survey results for the AI modules from IBM clearly demonstrate the success of this initiative at the institution, and SCSU will continue offering these IBM short courses/modules to all majors in the coming semesters.