New Jersey Institute of Technology is applying an artificial intelligence layer to its institutional data resources, launching IRIS (Institutional Resource Intelligence System). This new interface aims to provide faster access to information and unexpected insights for the NJIT community, with a university-wide rollout expected soon after its pilot phase.
Introducing IRIS: AI for Institutional Data
NJIT is launching IRIS, an AI-powered system designed to provide its staff, faculty, and administrators with quicker access to institutional data, policy documents, and reports. This initiative aims to reduce repetitive information requests and improve overall operational efficiency and decision-making by making existing knowledge more accessible.
The Technology Behind IRIS
IRIS operates as a specialized chatbot, hosted on a private Amazon Web Services cloud and utilizing open-source versions of OpenAI's language models. Unlike generic chatbots, IRIS is domain-aware, capable of distinguishing between data points, policies, and definitions, and is programmed to signal when it lacks confidence in an answer rather than fabricating information. Its architecture allows for flexible data updates without constant retraining.
Managing Data Complexity and Ensuring Accuracy
The system integrates information from hundreds of institutional documents and over 600 metric definitions, including dense data sets like Common Data Set reports. A significant engineering effort focused on enabling IRIS to search across diverse sources and extract precise, contextual information rapidly. It also performs daily 'sanity checks' by self-querying over 100 questions to confirm answer accuracy and highlight data trends.
Development Team and Future Aspirations
The development of IRIS was a collaborative effort, involving NJIT's Office of Institutional Effectiveness, three graduate students from the Ying Wu College of Computing (Amish Faldu, Shambhavi Parasahr, Deep Talreja), and NJIT's Information Services & Technology Core Systems team for network integration. The long-term vision is for IRIS to evolve into a comprehensive university-wide intelligence platform, enhancing workflow support, decision-making, and institutional knowledge management across various departments.
