Leveraging AWS for AI Innovation in Finance and Education

Dr. William Mann, Associate Professor of Finance at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, is at the forefront of integrating artificial intelligence into both academic research and classroom innovation. With no prior experience using AWS, Dr. Mann has rapidly adopted cloud technologies to launch impactful projects that span from cutting-edge research in intellectual property to scalable educational tools for faculty and students.

In one of his current research initiatives, Dr. Mann and his collaborators are using large language models (LLMs) to analyze patent documents for obfuscating language, text that may be strategically crafted to obscure meaning. This work explores the tradeoffs inventors face when choosing how transparently to describe their innovations. To execute this project at scale, the team deployed Amazon Bedrock Batch Inference to process millions of prompts efficiently and cost-effectively. Supporting infrastructure includes AWS Lambda for serverless compute, Amazon Aurora for relational data management, and Amazon S3 for secure, shareable storage. The built-in cost tracking features of AWS have also enabled seamless allocation of expenses across the research team.

Beyond research, Dr. Mann has led the development of a chatbot platform for business school courses, designed to enhance student engagement and learning. Faculty members can opt in to receive a dedicated URL where students interact with a course-specific chatbot trained on instructor-provided materials. The application is hosted on Amazon EC2, ensuring secure integration with Emory’s single sign-on (SSO) system, while Amazon Bedrock powers the LLM backend. All data, including prompts, responses, and training materials, remains within the AWS environment, addressing concerns around academic confidentiality and data privacy. The platform saw widespread adoption upon launch, and new features are being rolled out for the upcoming academic year.

“I relied heavily on the AWS at Emory team to support development efforts and assist with steps like security review and SSO integration,” says Dr. Mann. “Their fast response time and thorough knowledge have been instrumental in bringing these projects to reality and setting up a pipeline for rapid deployment of future initiatives in this area.” 

Dr. Mann’s experience demonstrates how AWS at Emory empowers faculty to move quickly from concept to implementation, whether in research, teaching, or both. With expert support and a robust cloud infrastructure, faculty innovators like Dr. Mann are redefining what’s possible in academic computing.