LMU Professor Leads AI Workshop for Northrop Grumman

As AI continues to transform the way everyone works, employees across industries are asking: How do you use AI responsibly in the workplace? For those who work in aerospace and defense technology, this question can be even trickier to answer.

To tackle this topic and help answer this question, Northrop Grumman, a global aerospace and security company, invited Mandy Korpusik, associate professor of computer science at Loyola Marymount University, to teach a four-hour Intro to AI workshop to 26 of their Los Angeles-based engineers in December.

Korpusik explained and demoed core large language model workflows, including prompting, retrieval-augmented generation, supervised fine-tuning, and reinforcement learning. The engineers got hands-on experience with coding exercises for specific engineering tasks to see how their discussion applied to their day-to-day jobs.

"They were very interested in responsible AI, which is a huge issue right now with hallucinations - basically inaccurate generated text," Korpusik said.

"My biggest takeaway for them was you should always have a human in the loop and treat AI sort of like an intern," she said. "Make sure there is always a person who is a final decisionmaker who verifies all of the output of the AI before it goes into production, especially if it's going into a rocket, which is very high risk."

Korpusik designed the workshop based on input from Northrop Grumman employee and LMU alumna Carolyne Smigelski B.S. '97, M.S. '24, MBA '24, who requested and set up this workshop for her colleagues.

"The AI workshop was fantastic - the demos and examples were relevant, realistic, and helped inspire project ideas for our teams on ways to put this technology to use," said Smigelski, an assistant department manager in electrical power/design integration and mechanisms/deployable products at Northrop Grumman.

Northrop Grumman and LMU Frank R. Seaver College of Science and Engineering have a longstanding history of working together. In addition to supporting STEM education, Northrop Grumman offers many Seaver students internships, mentorships, and career opportunities at their Los Angeles location.

"It was a great experience connecting with Northrop Grumman employees, providing practical AI guidance, and showcasing the academic rigor that our students experience at Seaver," said Korpusik.

Learn more about our industry collaborations with Northrop Grumman and LMU alumni who work there:

Nicolas Breceda '18

Marissa Alvarez '19

Beth Green '05

Northrop Grumman at STEM Outreach Expo