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An initiative brought 60 'visionary' students to Bocconi for four days of training, networking and a challenge that asked young people to imagine new ways of using artificial intelligence

Epilepsy affects 50 million people worldwide and 1% of the population in Italy. These statistics were behind the idea of imagining a device such as a smartwatch that could alert the wearer of an approaching epileptic seizure. And it was what allowed the 'Seizury' project – created by Andrea Menga, Ilinca Barbulesco, Matteo Panzera and Pietro Saveri – to win the 'VisionnAIres-The AI generation' competition, created by Bocconi with the main partnership of WMF and AI Festival.

The initiative involved 60 students from 28 universities all over Italy and with very different academic backgrounds, bringing them to Bocconi on 25-28 February for a comprehensive experience in the area of artificial intelligence. The four-day Bocconi event saw young men and women engaged in 8 masterclasses with Bocconi professors on various topics related to AI, networking and meetings with alumni and professionals from the world of artificial intelligence. And it also included a challenge with students competing in 16 groups on four macro areas of AI (health, finance, marketing and policy), proposing ideas on new ways of using artificial intelligence in everyday life.

The students in the winning group – each representing a different university – included Andrea Menga. "The challenge was to find a device for recording wearable variables that was non-invasive," says Andrea. "We looked at our wrists and realized that we were all wearing a smartwatch. We then wondered if there could be some kind of metric detectable by these devices that could help us predict epilepsy attacks and the answer was yes. Research on some scientific papers then allowed us to verify that the idea was feasible."

"The idea seemed to us to be developed using an excellent analysis and based on scientific data," emphasizes Carlo Salvato, Dean of the Bocconi Graduate School, on the panel of judges. "It is an idea that addresses a medical issue of significant social impact and is also scalable to other types of diseases. In addition, we think that it is relatively easy to implement compared to other proposals."

Three other teams went head to head with Seizury's group for the final victory of VisionnAIres. In the marketing area, 'Goodbai. Always reply' (Valentina Maria Giubboni, Francesca Mustica, Stefano Scacchetti, Lorenzo Scibilia) imagined an AI for the blind that allows e-commerce websites to be navigated through a voice interface. In the policy area, 'Unomad' (Erik Caltanella, Marco De Santis, Solima Nasuti, Ashley Andrea Squarcio) created a modular platform to help students living on campus manage university expenses, rent, mobility and academic organization. In the finance area, 'Investing4Future' (Matteo Billato, Gerolamo Del Lago, Sofia De Rosa, Giovanni Destro) focused on managing personal finance including for anyone with no knowledge on the subject.

"This event has given me lots of food for thought," comments Claudia Lollobattista, another of the 60 participants in the challenge. "My background focuses on psychology and mental health and the talks I participated in helped me understand that multidisciplinarity is not a limit, but an added value."

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