MIDDLETOWN, Pa. — A Penn State Harrisburg student was selected to participate in AI4ALL Ignite, a national, no-cost program that helps students build AI skills by pairing cross-institutional student teams with industry mentors for hands-on projects, mentorship and discussions about the broader social impact of AI.
Penuel Stanley-Zebulon, who is majoring in artificial intelligence methods and applications (AIMA), participated in the virtual program beginning in September 2025 and his team was selected to present their project at the AI4ALL symposium, a final online showcase held in February 2026 featuring selected student projects from the program.
Stanley-Zebulon said he was drawn to artificial intelligence after initially studying electrical engineering because he wanted to work on problems that could have a direct impact on people’s lives.
“I got involved with the AI4ALL Ignite program because I was looking for an opportunity to build something real, grow technically, and apply AI to meaningful problems. It felt like a strong fit for both my academic interests and the kind of impact I hope to have through my work,” he said.
Stanley-Zebulon worked with students from Tufts University and Abilene Christian University in the program. The team’s project involved training a model to distinguish between seizure and non-seizure brainwave patterns using EEG data, which measures brain activity.
“This matters because EEG recordings can be complex and time-consuming to interpret, and tools like this could one day support clinicians by helping flag important patterns more efficiently,” he said.
Stanley-Zebulon helped shape the project’s technical direction and built the initial version of the seizure-detection model, which gave the team a starting point to improve and refine.
His team then worked to process pediatric EEG data and train and test the model. They also built a Streamlit demo that allowed them to turn their data scripts into a simple web application to show a general audience how the model works.
The AI4ALL symposium, which was held online, brought together members of the broader AI community, including AI4ALL participants and others from across the country to share research and ideas about artificial intelligence. Stanley-Zebulon said being selected to present felt like meaningful recognition of the work his team had put in.
“It was exciting to share our project in that setting, explain both the technical side of what we built and why the problem mattered, and be part of a larger conversation around how AI can be used responsibly and meaningfully,” he said.
The timing of the AI4ALL program lined up well with his AI studies at Penn State Harrisburg, he said, noting the program began while he was taking the A-I 100 course, which introduces students to key AI capabilities and applications.
“A-I 100 gave me a foundation for understanding AI concepts and thinking about AI more broadly, while AI4ALL gave me an opportunity to apply some of that learning to a real project,” he said. “Working on the pediatric EEG seizure detection project made what I was learning in class feel much more concrete because I was simultaneously seeing how AI could be applied to a healthcare problem.”
His statistics course also helped prepare him for working with data and helping his team evaluate and interpret results. The AI4ALL experience has also carried back into his studies, he said.
“AI4ALL deepened my interest in healthcare AI, but it also made me more interested in questions beyond simply whether a model can achieve a good result — such as how we evaluate models carefully, understand their limitations, and build AI responsibly when the application involves people,” Stanley-Zebulon said. “Those are questions I’ve continued exploring as I’ve progressed through the AIMA program and my own projects.”
Stanley-Zebulon’s adviser Roderick Lee, associate professor of information systems at Penn State Harrisburg and associate professor of human-centered computing and social informatics with Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, applauded his student’s work.
“Penuel demonstrated tremendous initiative by independently pursuing an opportunity that complemented his studies in the Artificial Intelligence Methods and Applications major,” Lee said. “His selection to present at the AI4ALL symposium reflects both the quality of his team’s work and his progress toward an important learning objective of the major: applying artificial intelligence methods to meaningful, real-world challenges.”
Stanley-Zebulon — who received the Ackroyd Family Healthier Days scholarship at Penn State Harrisburg for other self-directed AI projects related to healthcare — said participating in the program made healthcare AI feel more tangible and reinforced his interest in building technology that is both technically strong and useful.
“What stood out most to me was seeing how quickly AI can move from something you study in theory to something that can be applied to a real-world problem with real human stakes,” he said.