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an intern at Xerox’s Data Analytics Research Lab where Sun served as director. The center developed social media mining tools powered by state-of-the-art machine learning models, similar to models used by today’s AI. Peng says her experience with Sun broadened her research perspective and encouraged her to speak up, take initiative and lead. “She has a rare ability to connect the dots between academic research and real-world impact,” says Peng who went on to become a Xerox researcher and publish with Sun. Sun urges researchers to explore full-stack thinking by looking at technology from the chip level all the way up to the user experience. Her holistic approach that helps lead to better technical optimization and efficiency and, ultimately, meaningful technological innovation. “That holistic view started for me at URI,” Sun says. “Even in the early ’90s, URI faculty were connecting electrical engineering, signal processing, and computer architecture into what became the foundation of high performance computing.” In the three decades since, URI has continued to build on that holistic view. The University has launched undergraduate and graduate programs in analytics and artificial intelligence, data science, and data analytics. In 2025, the Institute for AI & Computational Research opened to bring together researchers from across campus to position URI as a leader in AI, data science, high-performance computing, and quantum computing. Together, the initiatives and new facilities like the Fascitelli Center for Advanced Engineering give the next generation of URI students the same opportunities as Sun. “URI was very rigorous and always challenged me,” Sun says. “That’s the kind of environment that shapes you for life.”

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