Ohio State hosts researchers, business leaders to share AI strategies

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Ohio State hosts researchers, business leaders to share AI strategies

Conference brings together attendees from across disciplines

Students, scholars and business leaders from across the country recently gathered at The Ohio State University to discuss how academic institutions and companies are implementing AI.

Ohio State's Fisher College of Business convened the AI in Business Conference at The Blackwell Inn and Pfahl Conference Center on the Columbus campus. The conference supports the university's AI Fluency initiative. The initiative is ensuring that every Ohio State student, beginning with the class of 2029, will graduate AI fluent - fluent in their field of study and fluent in applying AI in that field.

The conference brought together academic researchers and business practitioners to discuss how AI tools can be applied across various disciplines.

"Responsible AI adoption requires more than technological expertise. It takes a multidisciplinary understanding of how AI affects organizations, people, decision-making and society. That's why this conference was such a success," said Aravind Chandrasekaran, Fisher dean and John W. Berry Sr. Chair in Business.

"We brought together individuals from all five of our academic departments and fostered connections with more than 200 faculty, students and industry leaders from around the world to move the conversation beyond AI's potential to what it takes to implement this technology responsibly, effectively and at scale."

Vanitha Zacharias, chief AI strategist for the Ohio Department of Administrative Services, encouraged students in attendance to consider AI instruction as professional development.

"As students, you are expected to learn a lot on a day-to-day basis. Don't stop when you enter into the workforce. Continue learning. Keep up this growth mindset," she said.

"Especially when it comes to AI, you have to learn a lot. The scene changes every day, and I have been learning nonstop ever since I took on the AI responsibilities [for the state of Ohio]. This growth mindset will help you, equip you with the right knowledge regardless of which job or which organization you enter into."

In a panel discussion, Fisher students and alumni shared how they translate what they learned about AI at Ohio State into the workplace.

Scott DiStefano, a May 2026 graduate who is now an associate at Chase Bank, said AI tools can increase efficiency for tasks such as comparing data sets.

"It's definitely helped me work faster, but I think the greatest impact has just been changing how I approach problems and the questions I ask and ultimately, how I make decisions," he said. "Using AI to benchmark or sift through Excel [spreadsheet] data is really good and it does save a lot of time."

Briana Lindemeyer, a 2025 graduate, said AI helps her streamline her work as a human resources professional with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

"If I want to pull references from medical journals or whatever we're working on, I can do that," she said. "It's an easy snapshot. It's rather quick: 'Okay, let me just put this [prompt] in here and see what comes back.'"

Minny Poon, a 2023 graduate who is now a data scientist with the Experience Management Institute, said she uses AI as a brainstorming assistant. She said the master's degrees she earned from Fisher in human resources management and applied economics gave her a foundation to analyze results when using AI.

"Having a background in data science and learning about machine learning and understanding the fundamentals of statistics has been really helpful and valuable in terms of the analysis and the problem solving and the decision making," she said. "It helps me recognize not just what AI can do, but also its limitations. It definitely allows me to be more intentional about how I use these tools and how to evaluate their outputs."

Another panel discussion featured professors from Ohio State and other universities sharing strategies for incorporating AI into curricula. Ismael Talke, a senior lecturer at Fisher in operations and business analytics, said he trained Google Gemini Gems agents to assist students in solving complex problems.

When training the AI agents, "I said, 'Don't give the answer, ask questions [of the students].' That way, they get the most out of it," he said. "This increases your critical thinking and engagement."

In his keynote address, Jojy Mathew, founder and CEO of AI technology company DataModal Inc., said companies should constantly reevaluate their return on investment from AI tools.

"There needs to be new ways to deploy AI in enterprises. How do you put AI on an employee's desktop [computer] so that they can do their job faster?" he said. "These are some of the opportunities that await us."

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