Engineer transitions from industry to innovation at UC

“I recently went to a conference and was trying to meet people. With more than 1,000 people at these events, it’s impossible to meet everybody,” he said. “That’s why I thought about making a tool that can match you with people at these events that share your interests.”

Excited to bring this idea to reality, Gonzalez set out to join with other AI engineers and compete in AI ATL, Georgia Tech’s AI-focused hackathon. In a hackathon-style event, teams of engineers work together, through the night (or nights) to create something or find an innovative solution centering around the event’s focus. Each hackathon has its own topic(s), and at AI ATL, participants had the option to choose from generative AI, agents, and GPT plug-ins. From Friday evening to Sunday morning, teams worked together, around the clock, to develop their projects.

The week of the hackathon, Gonzalez began reaching out to other registrants to form the team that would bring his idea to life. His team consisted of himself and three other engineers from Georgia Tech and the University of Florida. The team’s project, KayEcho.AI, was awarded first place overall in the hackathon, the highest honor. Within the software, people can link to their existing LinkedIn profiles, allowing KayEcho.AI to create a replica of each person. Then, users are prompted to share their interests or qualities they are looking for in a potential colleague. After the initial search, the platform suggests users that would be a match and creates a conversation between them with the information housed in their profiles. From there, users have the option to reach out if they’d like to deepen the connection with their suggested match.

“We were able to create the code and create the prototype during the two to three days,” Gonzalez said.

After the positive feedback and overall winner award, Gonzalez and his team hope to continue developing KayEcho.AI. Additionally, upon finishing his MEng degree, Gonzalez wants to work in computer vision and image processing. Currently, he is working with Kim to use a computer vision algorithm to detect wild pigs, track their movement patterns, and predict how they are going to move around the United States.

“I think computer vision is the key to my future career,” he said. “In several of my classes, professors are going deep into the material, trying to understand the way humans reason and how the brain works to combine it with artificial intelligence, and this knowledge is super important.”

Recently, Gonzalez has begun working with Kim on a new research direction that explores the intersection of computer vision, space manipulator systems, and animal behavior. They are investigating how biological strategies can inspire smarter solutions in aerospace applications, working to advance the industry even further. 

Featured image at top: Adonai Vera Gonzalez is pursuing a Master of Engineering degree at CEAS. Photo/Provided