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It all started with the inaugural President’s Innovation Challenge in 2022.

Osarodion ‘Victory’ Igbinobaro, at the time a master’s student in the UNLV School of Architecture, and his team entered their startup, , into the competition launched by President Keith E. Whitfield to encourage social and business entrepreneurship among students. AERO AI’s software blends drone technology with 3D visualization software to tell a story about a specific place, helping architects, engineers, and construction companies make informed decisions about projects.

“We leverage drone mapping technology, computer graphics, and AI to gather aerial geospatial data of a site and then visualize that information,” said Igbinobaro. “I’m a certified commercial drone pilot, so I was already familiar with using drones for architectural purposes, and I knew we could create a product that helped companies bring their projects to life.”

In addition to winning third place in the competition, UNLV administrators were so intrigued by the technology they commissioned AERO AI to capture aerial imagery of land in North Las Vegas that will eventually be transferred to UNLV. The resulting data sets also were provided to the School of Architecture for use in a class design project to envision how UNLV might develop the proposed north campus for land-intensive research, affordable student housing, and other needs.

Architecture professor Glenn Nowak was faculty advisor to the President's Challenge AERO AI team. He is also a co-founder of the company and serves as its industry advisor without compensation. He knew the data would offer a great opportunity for his current graduate students.

“These sorts of community-based design projects are common in schools of architecture,” said Nowak. “We partner with the community to see what they’re looking at for future development and turn it into an opportunity to let the students dream big without the restrictions of reality so to speak.”

A dozen students participated in the fall 2023 graduate seminar. Students conducted research on other large development projects spanning the globe, creating case studies that identified opportunities, challenges, and best practices to inform their work on the North Las Vegas campus. They also created collage boards highlighting the values they want to see incorporated into the future campus.

“I researched the Seattle’s World Fair, which had a space age theme and resulted in the Space Needle,” said graduate architecture student Tyler Naumes, a student in the seminar. “That led me to think, wouldn’t it be cool for the new campus to be home to a new iconic structure? I also researched Epcot Center and what stuck out to me was their focus on inclusion and accessibility, which we’d like to make a focus of the new campus as well.”

The students used CAD to create some basic campus designs and then worked with AERO AI to incorporate those designs into the company’s 3D visualization software, creating an interactive digital twin of the project site. 

“UNLV leadership gave us a general write-up about the project site, but the ideas all came from the students,” Nowak said. “As we began to understand the scale and costs associated with development of a project this large, we realized it would never be built all at once. So, the students tried to imagine a story that would be told over the next several years or decades.”

While the students’ designs were conceptual and are not intended to be part of development plans, the students did get an opportunity to present their final project to UNLV leadership, including President Whitfield.

“It was really exciting to have a one-on-one opportunity with the president,” said Naumes. “Hearing his ideas for the campus was really mind opening. We tend to live in our own bubble, but we all think about things differently, and I think that’s why he wanted us to come up with our own ideas and perspectives about the space.”

Whitfield said he appreciates the thoughtful consideration the students gave to how the buildings look next to each other, how the housing might be connected, and how the campus might look from the street.

“It’s the university’s job to give students the opportunity to think wild thoughts, apply what they’ve learned, and see what they come up with,” he said. “We want them to dream big because that’s where big ideas come from. They need real-world challenges to learn how to solve big problems.”

AERO AI, which started as a big idea at UNLV, is now a growing local tech startup company partnering with Nevada Partners, Drone Grantology, and other regional businesses. Igbinobaro says he’s excited to share his experience and foster innovation with a new set of students.

“It’s a privilege as an alumnus to partner with the university,” says Igbinobaro. “It was also an opportunity to look at the practical implications of the solution we had created, and how it can be implemented in real life.”