Florida A&M University (FAMU) and the 2150 Center for Innovation have announced an expansion of their partnership, focusing on using artificial intelligence to transform campus infrastructure and athletic facilities. The collaboration aims to turn these areas into platforms that support economic development, entrepreneurship, and community engagement.
The initiative builds upon existing work by FAMU students, faculty, and staff involved in an AI-driven project to redesign the Moore-Kittles Baseball Complex. This effort uses advanced planning and visualization technologies and is intended to provide students with practical experience applying new technologies to campus needs. There are plans for this project to potentially evolve into a data-driven startup.
“We believe campuses can be engines of entrepreneurship when real problems drive the work,” said Erskine “Chuck” Faush, CEO of the 2150 Center for Innovation. “By turning infrastructure challenges into innovation opportunities, universities can help create startups that are grounded in demand, tested in real environments, and built to scale.”
Faush also highlighted FAMU’s role as an example of academic excellence and leadership needed for successful industry-aligned innovation.
The expanded partnership is based on a shared vision of positioning the university as a “communiversity”—an ecosystem where academic talent works with industry experts and community stakeholders to develop solutions that offer both social value and business opportunities.
“Higher education is uniquely positioned to lead applied innovation because it brings together talent, research, and real environments,” said Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Allyson L. Watson, Ph.D. “This collaboration allows students and faculty to move beyond theory and actively design solutions that strengthen both the university and the communities we serve.”
Recently, representatives from the 2150 Center visited FAMU’s iLAB team to discuss strategies for making campus facilities hubs for engagement and economic inclusion. The nine-member team includes undergraduate engineering students, graduate architecture students, faculty mentors, and consultants from FAMU’s School of Architecture & Engineering Technology as well as the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering.
Through its iLAB model, teams use real-world campus needs such as facility optimization or energy efficiency as starting points for developing AI-enabled solutions. These multidisciplinary groups design prototypes that can be used on campus or scaled elsewhere.
“By using our campus infrastructure as a real-world innovation environment, we are creating opportunities for students and faculty to solve meaningful problems while gaining valuable experience in the use of generative AI tools,” said Reginald Perry, Ph.D., associate provost for academic and faculty affairs who oversees the iLAB project.
Jackson Norflis, a second-year industrial engineering student from Atlanta involved in the project commented: “My experience during the 2150 Center for Innovation campus visit was phenomenal. I gained a deeper understanding of the scale of our project and received valuable guidance from prominent leaders in my field.”
Looking ahead to fall 2026, plans include leveraging AI tools further so that students can present a completed architectural refresh design for FAMU’s baseball complex—originally built over four decades ago.
The collaboration between FAMU and 2150 serves as an example of how historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) can lead efforts in AI-powered economic development—not just by educating talent but also by building companies, platforms, and broader innovation ecosystems. The initiative offers a model other institutions might follow when aligning infrastructure improvements with investment goals while fostering entrepreneurship within their communities.
For more information about this project at FAMU contact provostcomm@famu.edu.
The 2150 Center for Innovation describes itself as a public-private platform connecting HBCU students with corporate partners addressing urgent challenges through structured cohorts focused on applied learning aligned with workforce needs. More details are available at https://www.2150innovate.org/.
