RAISE-25 – Our Future With AI: Utopian or Dystopian?

Informatics – Data Science – AI Competition

Step into the future of innovation! RAISE-25 will challenge you to unravel the scope of AI’s impact on our lives and human society. RAISE-25, a novel Informatics – Advanced Data Science – Artificial Intelligence (AI) Competition, provides an opportunity to unleash your problem-solving prowess to tackle one of the most defining questions of our time: What will our AI-powered future look like? RAISE-25 invites all young geniuses to explore this time-sensitive and critical theme: Will AI shape our future into a utopian or dystopian reality?

Graduate and undergraduate students – Dive into real-world data and explore how AI is transforming education, reshaping careers, and redefining society as we know it. Whether you’re eager to showcase your skills or spark bold insights, this is your chance to lead the conversation on humanity’s AI-powered future. With total prizes of up to $17,000 to be WON, this is your chance to showcase your informatics, advanced data science, analytics, and AI-driven problem-solving brilliance!

RAISE-25 Student Informatics, Data Science, and AI Competition Overview

• RAISE (Rethinking AI for Shared Empowerment), a virtual AI Lab, presents another challenge on human-AI interaction: RAISE-25!
• The RAISE-25 competition is titled “Our Future with AI: Utopian or Dystopian?” and seeks to uncover key themes emerging from news headlines on the promises and challenges of AI in shaping our future in 3 key areas: education, jobs and careers, and societal change.
• RAISE-25 is a great opportunity for talented students to showcase their informatics, advanced data science, analytics, and AI.
• Hosted by Rutgers Bloustein School’s Master of Public Informatics (MPI) program
• Join us on LinkedIn for more updates and insights

Register Today for the RAISE-25 Competition

Registration Form

Important Dates

• Team registration deadline: February 3, 2025
• ONLINE submission deadline: February 10, 2025
• Finalists announced: March 10, 2025
• Finalists only – In-person finals at the Bloustein School, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ: April 11, 2025

Eligibility

• Teams of 2-5 members can register for either the undergraduate or graduate track by signing up through the registration form. Teams must then reply to the RAISE-25 team’s subsequent confirmation email to formally join the competition
• The competition is open to currently enrolled undergraduate and graduate students from accredited US institutions
• Participants must legally reside in the US for the entire duration of the competition

Prizes and Awards

• First Prize (one per track): Up to $5,000 per team
• Second Prize (up to two per track): Up to $1,750 per team

Review the RAISE-25 Terms and Conditions

Judging Criteria

• Submissions will be evaluated based on overall excellence, creativity, breadth of analysis, depth of exploratory analytics, application of NLP and text informatics methods, LLM-based approaches, originality of the analytical approach, clarity, ethical considerations, and recommendations
• Judges’ decisions are final and binding, with no provision for appeals or review

Competition Guidelines and Details*

The RAISE-25 competition invites participants to explore the theme “Our Future with AI: Utopian or Dystopian?” by analyzing and uncovering dominant themes in AI’s role in shaping our future. Participants will examine how AI influences education, jobs and careers, and society, from its utopian potential to empower and innovate to dystopian challenges and ethical dilemmas.

• Analyze news headlines, generate insights, assess ethics, and make recommendations for shared empowerment.
• Any/all of these could be addressed or used: Embedded topics and themes, Sentiment Analysis, emotion recognition, Abstractive and extractive summaries, Machine learning methods, rules-based and synthetic approaches, Use of Large Language Models and derivate tools, applications, and code modules, Use of exploratory methods for textual informatics, data visualization, Other AI methods.
• Participants will be expected to use informatics, data science, analytics, and AI-based approaches to discover dominant and hidden themes from the dataset.
• Participants may use exploratory analyses, data visualizations, statistics, computational linguistics, quantitative modeling, machine learning, or other analytical methods.
• Each team is free to define its strategy – teams can also use LLMs and tools like Claude, Bard, or ChatGPT. However, the use of any AI tool/s MUST be explicitly declared along with a list of prompts submitted as an appendix. Any use of AI without explicit declaration of specific prompts is disallowed. References for all sources must be cited using APA 6 or higher.
• Tools and languages allowed: Python – Colab or Jupyter Notebooks only, R – .R or .RMD only, Tableau, Excel, For any other tool – please confirm with the organizers
• Shortlisted finalists will be provided with additional instructions and invited to attend (required) the final round of the competition to be held on April 11, 2025, at Rutgers University.

* Review the RAISE-25 Terms and Conditions

Information Sessions

Virtual information sessions will be hosted to provide information and guidance on the competition structure, materials, schedule, and expectations. All sessions will cover the same topics and will be followed by an open Q&A. All instructions will be provided in the documentation which will be shared with registered participants. However, due to the large number of participating student teams from all over the US, it is advisable to attend one of these sessions as it may be difficult to respond to all emails promptly with the required clarity. Please register and attend at least one of the sessions below.

• Session 1: Jan 8, Wednesday – 12 PM EST
• Session 2: Jan 24, Friday – 12 PM EST
• Session 3: Feb 7, Friday – 12 PM EST

RSVP through this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/LMABOC9FS1K1g5AHfYilLQ  
Note: Once registered, you can attend any of the sessions. Ignore the dates suggested by Zoom – add only the 3 dates mentioned in this email to your calendars.

About the Hosts

The Bloustein School’s Master of Public Informatics is a distinguished program for educating highly talented professional student cohorts in the competencies needed in public informatics, advanced data science, and analytics, which includes topics such as machine learning, global data analytics, artificial intelligence, textual analytics and natural language processing, statistics, programming, data management, GIS, visualization, spatial analysis, domain applications, and the application of these skills for domain-specific value creation. The MPI program at Rutgers provides excellent state-of-the-art research-driven project opportunities. Graduates of the MPI program will provide a deep understanding of advanced data science and analytics methods, context, and public benefit perspectives in this fast-growing and high-demand domain.

Interested in sponsorships? Contact our team: informatics@ejb.rutgers.edu

Contact Us

RAISE-25 Coordinator: Julia Esguerra
Graduate Teams Coordinator: Esha More
Undergraduate Teams Coordinator: Mansi Asher
Please use this email for all correspondence: informatics@ejb.rutgers.edu
RAISE-25 CHAIR: Prof. Jim Samuel

Code of Conduct

Participants must adhere to a strict code of ethical conduct, and agree to abide by all the rules and requirements of Bloustein, Rutgers, and the State of New Jersey.

Please review the RAISE-25 Terms and Conditions that apply to all participants.

Updates and Changes

Rutgers University and the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy reserve the right to modify the competition rules, schedule, or any other aspect of the competition. Registered participants will be notified of such changes via email.