Fresno State students got a glimpse of the future at the Elevate 2025, Technology, Innovation & AI For Student Success Expo, which was held on Nov. 3 at the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Student Union (RSU).
Fresno State’s premier technology and innovation event was co-hosted by Associated Students, Inc. (ASI), Technology Services and Student Affairs.
Raffles were held throughout the day, with lucky students winning an iPad, Apple Watch and promotional products from the event’s vendors, but the star of the show was the robotic dog.
Max Tsai, director of Planning and Digital Transformation at Fresno State, remotely made the robotic dog stand up and walk on two legs.
“He doesn’t have a name yet,” Tsai said. “Maybe if you get the word out, we can find a name for him.”
Tsai wore several hats — from making sure there were enough chairs on stage for guest speakers to co-hosting and throwing out Fresno State giveaways. One of the items was a virtual reality box made of cardboard that turns a smartphone into a subversive experience. Users can explore virtual environments, watch 360-degree videos and play games.
The day was divided into three workshops, and students had to RSVP to attend each one. The first workshop featured keynote speaker Saravan Kumar, chief technology officer at Menera.ai, who demonstrated how easy it is to use ChatGPT and Cursor to create a personal joke app that lets users generate jokes.
Students enjoyed lunch catered by Me & Ed’s Pizza while listening to an OpenAI streaming presentation titled “AI and Higher Education,” featuring speaker Andrew Glenn, AI deployment manager on OpenAI’s higher education team, based in San Francisco.
After, there was a Q&A session on AI trends and opportunities, hosted by Bao Johri, vice president of information technology and chief information officer, and Camalah Saleh, ASI president. The session featured a panel of student leaders and innovators, including Ayanna Avalos, Sarah Sevy, Danielle Vu and Parker Hill.
Johri said that listening to student voices is key to Fresno State’s artificial intelligence (AI) journey and that the panel was meant for administrators, faculty and other students to hear different views on how they are incorporating AI into their studies and academic programs.
The students shared their thoughts on how they use AI to organize their schoolwork and assignments, and on the importance of double-checking the sources OpenAI suggests. They expressed concerns about energy consumption from AI data centers and about jobs being replaced by automated systems.
Hill, ASI senator of Research and Innovations, said there are many parallels with the Industrial Revolution, when many workers were replaced.
“We haven’t seen a lot of the outcomes yet, and so much of our economy is tied up in AI,” Hill said. “It’s a dangerous predicament if things don’t pan out.”
The last part of the day was broken into three workshop tracks that students could choose to attend, covering cloud engineering, AI development, storytelling with Adobe Express and how to build their own Bulldog Genie mini.
The event ended with a network and social hour with campus technology experts, researchers, and industry experts, which featured Fresno State alumni Augustin Rivera, Zaira Rivera and Mark Phillips.
Johri said it was wonderful to see so many people gathered to celebrate technology, innovation and AI.
“Today is about discovery and connection,” Johri said. “It’s about bringing to light the technologies available to students across departments and the campus community.”
