AskAlan: Our Story

It's late. The exam is close. You are stuck.

In Summer 2024, four ECE undergraduates -- Vaibhav Seshadri, Yassine Berrachid, Ethan Hugh, and Abhishek Madan -- partnered with Professor Salma Emara to reimagine that moment. Their fourth-year capstone project became Alan: an AI assistant built not to shortcut learning, but to support it. When Alan launched in January 2025 in a 450-student programming course, it followed one simple rule: every answer must be grounded in official course material and backed by citation. No guessing. No hallucinating. Just trustworthy, course-specific support — available 24/7.

As Alan expanded into other engineering courses, including MIE100 in collaboration with Professor Fatemeh Jazinizadeh, a second undergraduate team -- Vir Patel, Ada Selcuk, and Warrick Tsui -- extended the platform's capabilities, strengthening its design and scalability.

Built by students. Led by faculty. Grounded in integrity.

Alan shows that in the age of AI, academic support can be both immediate -- and trustworthy.