UROP Research Mentor Project Submission Portal: Submission #1004

Submission information
Submission Number: 1004
Submission ID: 19606
Submission UUID: 7befcd86-1065-4d0c-8506-13e042b94473

Created: Tue, 04/29/2025 - 04:03 PM
Completed: Tue, 04/29/2025 - 04:03 PM
Changed: Wed, 10/29/2025 - 04:06 PM

Remote IP address: 146.201.37.85
Submitted by: Anonymous
Language: English

Is draft: No
Primary Research Mentor Name Paul Van Der Mark
Research Mentor Preferred Pronouns
When potential research assistants are reaching out via email, what is your preferred honorific? Dr.
Contact Email (FSU Email if affiliated) pvandermark@fsu.edu
Position Title Faculty
FSU College (if applicable) N/A
FSU Department or Non-FSU Organization Affiliation Research Computing Center
Headshot (optional)
Research Assistant Supervisor (if different from above)
Research Assistant Supervisor Preferred Pronouns
Research Assistant Supervisor Preferred Honorific?
Contact Email (FSU Email if affiliated)
Name of Other Faculty/Collaborator(s) (if applicable) Alex Birkovsky
Other Faculty/Collaborator(s) Preferred Pronouns
Other Faculty/Collaborator(s) Preferred Honorific?
Contact Email (FSU Email if affiliated) abirkovsky@fsu.edu
Title of the Project PolicyBot: A Retrieval-Augmented Generation assistant for FSU policy and procurement guidance
Project Keywords llm, rag, ai, resource computing
Are you currently looking for research assistants? No
Number of Research Assistants Needed 1
Relevant Research Assistant Major(s) Computer Science
Project Location: On FSU Main Campus
If the project location is off campus, does the research assistant(s) need to provide their own transportation?
Please select the choice that most accurately describes your expectations for the research assistant(s): Partially Remote
Approximately how many hours a week would the research assistant(s) need to work? 8
Roughly what time frame do you expect research assistant(s) to work? Flexible schedule (Combination of business and outside of business. TBD between student and research mentor.)
Overall Research Project Description The Research Computing Center (RCC) at Florida State University supports research and education by maintaining a distinct campus cyberinfrastructure and offering training opportunities and dedicated consulting services. Within RCC, the AI Lab explores the rapidly evolving fields of AI, machine learning, and generative AI to better serve its customers. This has led to several UROP projects, such as the classification of Shakespeare's works and election prediction based on Twitter content.
Research Tasks FSU has published a significant amount of formal documentation on policies related to travel, purchasing, security, HR, and other areas. However, it can be hard to find specific information. The goal of this project is to develop a chatbot that utilizes RAG and LLM technologies to provide users with answers to questions about FSU policies. This will involve scraping relevant policy documents, training an LLM, and making it accessible through a web interface, such as Open WebUI.
Skills that research assistant(s) may need: Interest or experience with Large Language Models.
Mentoring Philosophy The Research Computing Center (RCC) at Florida State University provides high-performance computing resources and expert support, including access to a large compute cluster, GPU servers, and consulting services. Education and innovation are central to our mission. We offer workshops and host internships to help students and researchers develop essential computational skills. Students involved with the RCC enjoy substantial freedom in their research while also receiving strong mentorship and support to ensure their success.
Please provide a link to your publications, a video clip, or a website for your research project (if applicable): https://its.fsu.edu/about-its/initiatives/machine-learning-and-data-sciences-lab
Please add any additional information here (if applicable):
Are you interested in participating in the UROP Research Mentor Roundtable? No
Roundtable times and Zoom links NA
Mentor Handbook, FAQs, and Communication Yes
UROP Performance Evaluation Yes
Materials Grant Yes
UROP Poster Presentation Yes
Year 2025
update url https://cre.fsu.edu/urop-research-mentor-project-submission-portal?token=jQcDh1R-nmRgaPpGXsTwILIcvKd6f4UbHCpp7gczcK0