Waukesha County Technical College has named
Dan Lindberg director of the school’s new applied AI lab: Wisconsin Center for AI Development and Implementation.
Lindberg is the first director of the applied AI lab, which will be housed in a newly renovated space in Building Q at WCTC. The lab is scheduled to open this fall. Renovations are ongoing and involve creating an incubator for businesses and entrepreneurs on the first floor, along with modern classroom and lab spaces for students on the second floor.
Lindberg's experience includes serving as principal of Applied Economic Insight LLC, a consultancy that provides data analysis services (using machine learning) to real estate owners, operators and developers.
He taught predictive and prescriptive business analytics, and microeconomics courses, at Marquette University, while incorporating machine learning into his teaching. He worked in different market analyst positions at Direct Supply Inc., where he led market selection, assessment and strategic planning initiatives for senior living providers.
"Dan's extensive experience using data and machine learning to help organizations solve problems and grow their business made him the perfect fit to lead our applied AI lab,” said
Laura Krohn, executive director of WCTC’s Corporate Training Center. “He will be able to advance WCTC's comprehensive portfolio of AI programs and services in partnership."
In his new role, Lindberg will have two main areas of focus. He will spend half his time overseeing the applied AI lab and the other half working closely with the School of Business’s Information Technology department teaching and developing AI and data-related courses.
Through the lab, Lindberg hopes to put together workshops and seminars and provide resources to help businesses implement AI into their operations. In the classroom, he is planning to teach and refine courses including computer vision, natural language processing and a capstone, along with others that focus on predictive analytics and machine learning.
Earlier this month, WCTC also announced a
new partnership with gener8tor to launch an applied AI lab accelerator at the school.
"I want to foster an ecosystem between students, faculty and businesses in Waukesha County," said Lindberg. "There’s a wonderful platform to work off of at WCTC, and there is vision here. We have a physical space with the lab, we have the expertise with the faculty, and on the startup front, the accelerator with gener8tor (which helps early-stage tech-enabled startups, with a special focus on AI). That is going to be a huge catalyst to help create that ecosystem. We want to drive traffic to that lab, and put together a platform for workshops and seminars, as well as any sort of custom engagements that groups might need.”
