Bri D’Urso and Ben Kopf, both second-year computer science students in UHart’s College of Arts and Sciences, attended the Hartford AI Day 2025 conference to present a summary of research their department conducted in collaboration with UHart’s Hydration Health Center. Researchers applied machine learning to reveal the biological and psychological factors that characterize how hydrated someone is.
The prestigious annual conference, spearheaded by Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam, is designed to strengthen the city’s transformation into an AI center of excellence. D’Urso and Kopf presented in front of a record-setting 500 participants, including corporate and startup executives and researchers.
“In essence, this innovative collaboration will help define an array of new clinical models for characterizing and promoting healthy hydration across diverse populations and the aging continuum,” says Colleen X. Muñoz, director of HHC and associate professor of health sciences. “It’s not the only collaboration in which HHC has engaged—we’ve also worked with psychology and communications—but it’s one of the most vital because it addresses such important public health questions related to water intake.”
According to Muñoz, the presentation that was made focused mostly on the process of data management and optimization of the machine learning algorithms used.
She and her colleagues are still analyzing data and intend to submit a scientific manuscript for peer review. Such professionally oriented activity can be a great advantage for students like D’Urso, Kopf, and their classmates, for in addition to learning from it, they will have something very impressive to share with prospective employers.