The Business Students Who Want to Use AI for Good
USC Marshall and USC Viterbi professors are bridging the worlds of business and computing by teaching students to become translators between AI technology and organizations.
July 20, 2026By Chinyere Cindy Amobi
Across USC’s schools and campuses, researchers, faculty and practitioners are developing innovative solutions for societal issues, imagining new approaches to making art and finding ways for creators to prepare for a shifting landscape as AI increasingly intersects with different fields.
Under USC President Beong-Soo Kim’s leadership, advancing ethical AI that puts people first has become a university priority — building on USC’s legacy of innovation while preparing the next generation of researchers, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, artists and health professionals.
This story is part of Trojan Family Magazine’s AI series highlighting the people and ideas driving USC’s vision forward.
Read the entire series: “USC at the Leading Edge of AI.”
Part 1: The Business Students | Part 2: The Pharmaceutical Developers | Part 3: The Creatives | Part 4: The Filmmaker | Part 5: The Urban Planners
Three years ago, professors Kimon Drakopoulos and Ramandeep Randhawa at the USC Marshall School of Business made a crucial observation: The people with the technical AI expertise often weren’t the ones making decisions on how to use the technology.
So, the pair created Artificial Intelligence for Business (BUAI), a joint Bachelor of Science degree in partnership with the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. The goal is to combine the strengths of two of the country’s top business and engineering schools to produce students skilled in applying emerging technologies to address real-world issues.
“What we wanted to do with this program is produce people who have the technical expertise to understand what the technology can do but also have the business mindset to translate it and apply it in organizations to solve the right problems,” Drakopoulos says.
One of the first undergraduate programs in the world focused on artificial intelligence, the program now receives thousands of applications each year for just 50 slots. Students take core business courses at USC Marshall and more technical AI-focused classes at USC Viterbi. Additional courses link students to industry leaders for real-world experience.
“The program puts us in the picture from an educational point of view in the AI landscape, so I think this was a very innovative initiative for USC,” Drakopoulos says.
Charlie Hannigan, assistant professor of clinical data sciences and operations at USC Marshall, agrees. As the current academic director of BUAI, Hannigan has seen his students partner with AI industry leaders and expand their perspectives on how they can change the world for the better using their new skillsets.
“A lot of our students see AI as a tool to unlock areas of social good that couldn’t have been done before,” Hannigan says.
A lot of our students see AI as a tool to unlock areas of social good that couldn’t have been done before.
Charlie Hannigan, assistant professor of clinical data sciences and operations at USC Marshall
Vanya Shrivastava, a BUAI sophomore and incoming president of the USC Marshall AI Association (MAIA), is one such student. “BUAI students have the technical foundation to do the same machine learning work as computer science majors, but we also bring a client-facing, people-oriented perspective to the conversations that matter,” Shrivastava says. She believes this duality makes BUAI students uniquely equipped to better shape the development and intent behind AI innovation toward social good.
She built a robotic dog named Bucks as a project for the MAIA finance department. The dog uses a microcomputer, computer vision and a voice agent to teach children about finance. This summer she’s interning at NASDAQ doing technical research and AI automation.
Junior Priya Loran, founder of MAIA, is part of the inaugural class of BUAI. After her grandmother had a stroke that affected her ability to speak, Loran read about neurology researchers using AI to create a predictive model to help stroke patients communicate.
“That really drew me in and inspired me to pursue something within technology that could impact the world and individuals who are suffering from medical-related issues,” she says. Last summer, she worked with Microsoft; this year, she is working as an AI engineer at Nike. She says the club receives a lot of email and outreach from companies asking to connect with BUAI students and MAIA members.
Junior Anika Bose, also from the inaugural class of BUAI, is doing a progressive degree program in applied data science through USC Viterbi and is co-president of the Shift SC club on campus. This year, she is on her second summer interning with Apple.
“Shift SC promotes discussion and discourse, events and more, about how tech is a tool, and like all tools, it can be used for good and it can be used for bad,” Bose says.
Hannigan says over 90% of BUAI juniors have summer internships lined up at some of the most well-known companies in the world, such as Google, Apple, Meta, Goldman Sachs, the Mayo Clinic and Deloitte.
“It was really important to us that we make sure that our students take meaningful ethics classes that allow them to understand how this technology situates them and the businesses that they’re going to work for or create in the world,” Hannigan says. “Businesses are really hungry for our students, and we want to make sure that they are polished, ethical, thoughtful, forward-thinking leaders that will shape the technology as it develops over the next 10 to 20 years.”
