Business Students Apply AI Acumen To Build App Startup

Ramesh Lakshmanan, who formerly taught in the Jindal School, connected the students with his son, Aadhithya Ramesh, 17, to develop the platform, which combines information about an autistic child's experiences at home, school and in specialized classes in order to provide a more complete picture for parents, teachers and therapists.

The idea for the app came from Aadhithya, whose 10-year-old brother is autistic and nonverbal. After Poddar and Peddu competed last February in the Jindal School's BS in Business Analytics & AI x ALIAS x Google Business Analytics Case Competition, Lakshmanan asked them to help his son develop the NeuroLog platform for Aadhithya's nonprofit NeuroLog.life Foundation. Both Poddar and Peddu joined as co-founders.

The NeuroLog platform was created with AI and uses machine learning to provide insights for parents and therapists.

"We are beyond grateful to work alongside Aadhithya in building NeuroLog into a scaled solution for families and kids," Poddar said. "His role is to guide the way, especially on the biological and behavioral data side. He is also the lead inventor on our U.S. provisional patent."

About the App

Aadhithya, a Frisco high school student, was curious not only about what happened during his brother's applied behavior analysis sessions focused on socialization and communication skills, but also whether the information was helping improve outcomes or whether any analytic trends were reaching parents or teachers.

Beyond that, he wanted to create a platform that could make an impact. One in 31 8-year-old children have autism spectrum disorder, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"I used AI as a tool to implement the core architecture," he said. "AI has 100 ways to solve a problem. I'm here to guide the one thing to go the way we want it to go."

Though AI is a valuable tool, human involvement and prompt engineering are key to the platform's effectiveness.

"Essentially the better you structure your prompts, the quicker you get your output, and the better AI is doing the job for you," Poddar said.

Applying Business, AI Acumen

The UT Dallas students credited the Jindal School's focus on business analytics and AI with helping them acquire the skills needed to develop the platform.

Poddar, a member of the Davidson Management Honors Program, has been interested in finance and entrepreneurship for as long as he can remember and runs another venture in his native India.

"This degree is shaped for the future because I get enough exposure to AI that I can use it for business, but I don't have to get into development of AI," Poddar said. "We are building NeuroLog using AI, so this major is perfect and sets up a launchpad for me to do anything."

Peddu, whose focus is on developing the app's technical side, said the Jindal School was a top choice because of its networking opportunities and national rankings.

"What I find especially meaningful is seeing Manan and Vedcharan take what they are learning through the Jindal School, particularly business analytics and AI/machine learning, and applying it collaboratively to a real community problem," Lakshmanan said. "They are great students. I'm so proud of their work. I truly believe their contribution made a huge impact."