Turning Data into Decisions: How the Krenicki Center Advances Student Learning, Research, and Community Impact Through AI and Analytics

Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data analytics are transforming the way organizations make decisions, solve problems, and serve their community. Organizations need the ability to turn complex data into meaningful insights. At Purdue University, the Krenicki Center for Business Analytics & Machine Learning is helping organizations do just that.

The Center connects Purdue students and faculty with organizations across the private, public, and nonprofit sectors, creating opportunities to apply these rapidly changing technologies to real-world challenges. These partnerships give students hands-on experience while advancing Purdue’s land-grant mission of experiential learning, innovative research, and community impact.

From the Classroom to Real-World Experience

The Center advances Purdue’s mission to educate students through practical, hands-on learning by creating experiential opportunities that enable students to apply artificial intelligence, analytics, and machine learning to solve real-world challenges. Beginning in Fall 2026, the Krenicki Center will further expand access to experiential learning through the launch of its Independent Study program, enabling more students to participate in partner-sponsored projects while increasing the Center's capacity to serve private, public, and nonprofit organizations.

Turning Research into Real-World Solutions

The Center supports Purdue’s mission to advance knowledge for the public good by translating faculty expertise and emerging research into practical AI and analytics solutions that create measurable impact for partners.

Connecting Purdue and the Community

The Center’s community impact work focuses on two areas: supporting Indiana nonprofits through student consulting projects and supporting convenings and educational events that bring students together with community and industry partners to share knowledge, build networks, and engage with analytics and AI.

Through experiential learning projects, the Krenicki Center provides organizations with access to Purdue students and faculty while giving students the opportunity to apply machine learning and business analytics to real-world challenges. Through the Center’s community impact initiative, public and nonprofit organizations now have the opportunity to engage in the same services available to private sector organizations. These projects have included partnerships with organizations such as Accenture, where Purdue students developed a predictive analytics model using time-series forecasting and machine learning to support workforce planning, improve defect triaging and inform staffing decisions.

In addition to project-based engagement, the Center also launched Innovate & Connect: Krenicki Center × AI Foundry Showcase in March 2026 in partnership with Purdue’s Department of Computer Science and AI Foundry. The showcase highlighted student innovation by bringing together students, faculty, industry partners, and the broader Purdue community.

The Center further supports community engagement by funding and partnering on conferences, workshops, and panel discussions that bring together industry professionals, academics, students, and community leaders around emerging topics in analytics and AI. Through collaborations with organizations such as INFORMS Analytics+, Women & Hi-Tech, and TechPoint, the Center helps create opportunities for knowledge sharing and connection across business communities.

Through these activities, the Krenicki Center serves as a bridge between Purdue and external communities, helping organizations explore emerging technologies while preparing students to become leaders in data-driven decision-making.

Transforming Purdue United Way’s Approach to Forecasting

The Krenicki Center recently completed a community impact project with the United Way of Central Indiana to modernize how the organization forecasts the performance of its community programs. Historically, United Way relied on manual, Excel-based linear regression models that were prone to errors and struggled to account for variance across different program types.

To fix these challenges, the Center’s faculty-mentored student team built an automated system that converts United Way’s raw data into quarterly forecasts, aiming to keep prediction errors under 25%. The system processes data for 48 United Way programs, automatically cleaning up missing numbers and testing six time-series models for each project. Instead of using one model for all 48 programs, the system automatically picks the best model for each specific program. Matching the model to the program boosts overall accuracy by 15% to 20% compared to traditional single-model approaches.

When tested, the new system cut average prediction errors down to 22.3%, beating the 25% goal. It also slashed the time needed to build forecasts from two hours to just 15 minutes per report. The tool can handle 50 or more programs, automatically generating Excel reports that help United Way leadership make better long-term plans.

Students Making an Impact

Beyond Purdue United Way, the Krenicki Center has recently done projects for both Indy Reads and the Girl Scouts of Central Indiana. “The students were proactive, collaborative, and genuinely committed to delivering meaningful and actionable results. Both partner organizations benefited from increased operational efficiency and the potential for cost reduction and revenue improvement based on the solutions delivered,” says clinical assistant professor Davi Moreira, who mentored both teams. And at the same time, students walked away with deeper insight into how data science can create real-world, community-driven value.

Expanding the Impact

Through its work in experiential learning, innovative research, and community impact, the Krenicki Center connects Purdue students and faculty with organizations to address real-world challenges through analytics and artificial intelligence. From providing students with hands-on opportunities to developing practical solutions for partners, the Center demonstrates how collaboration can create impact beyond the classroom. As the Krenicki Center continues to expand its partnerships across the private, public, and nonprofit sectors, it strengthens connections between Purdue and the communities it serves. At the same time, it prepares students to become leaders in a data-driven world.