Copyright Shaw Local Enewspapers
A former U.S. Army reservist was instrumental in creating a user-friendly AI tool to benefit the veterans of a local American Legion Post as part of his graduate degree work at Elmhurst University. Eugene Lee’s work on the AI tool spanned two graduate degrees – a master’s in business administration and a master’s in data science and analytics, which he completed in May. The free tool, Post80.AI, which is available to veterans of Downers Grove American Legion Post 80, uses advanced algorithms to provide tailored suggestions based on individual queries. To date, more than 100 veterans have used the tool to navigate the complexities associated with learning about veteran benefits. Lee, a Chicago-area native, joined the Army out of high school and was a member of the reserves for more than six years, including two years of active duty in security forces based at the Sierra Army Depot in northern California. He now is part of the inactive reserves for an additional year to complete his service. American Legion Post 80 reached out to Elmhurst University about the possibility of a collaboration to help veterans sift through all the available veteran-related information using AI. With the help of a student team, Lee sent a survey to thousands of active-duty military and veterans asking what types of veteran-related benefits they were seeking more information about. Access to mental health and family resources were among the most important topics veterans were seeking, Lee said. “The military offers a lot of benefits,” he said. Lee found that sometimes veterans knew about the benefits but were unaware about how to access more information, and some veterans were completely unaware of some of the benefits. And some older veterans don’t fully understand how to navigate the internet to find out more information about benefits. “It is a daunting process,” Lee said. Lee’s team had to navigate privacy issues as well as factor in the authenticity of any resources the AI tool would generate. “We had to set up a lot of guard rails, too. AI can get broken down over time,” Lee said. Lee wanted the tool to be more than a list of websites that continuously would need to be monitored to ensure the information was up to date. This led the team to a user-friendly AI platform that connects users to information using a variety of channels. Completing his undergraduate degree online at Liberty University while on active duty, Lee said his decision to head back to Elmhurst for a graduate degree in part was based on the opportunity to wrestle again. “Elmhurst has given me more than I honestly could imagine,” Lee said. During his time working on the project, Lee said he also was working as a credit analyst, wrestled for the university and attended classes. “It was a challenging time, but it also was very rewarding and made me feel like I could accomplish a lot,” he said.
