The Fall 2024 course staff has expertise and interests in the following:

AI for science (Yuanqi Du)
classification (John Kowalczyk, Kelsey Liu)
clustering (Kelsey Liu)
computational linguistics (Prof. Lee, Pun Chaixanien)
computational social science (Prof. Lee)
computer vision (Darren Key, Hangyu Zhou, Kelsey Liu, Pranav Mishra)
control (Janna Lin)
databases (Johnny Wang)
generative models (Yuanqi Du)
geometric deep learning (Yuanqi Du)
high-dimensional statistics (Diyang Li)
interpretability (Tushaar Gangavarapu, Yuanqi Du)
knowledge-based inference (Amirah Ricks)
large language models aka LLMs (Amirah Ricks, Darren Key, John Kowalczyk, Kelsey Liu, Pranav Mishra, Tushaar Gangavarapu)
learning theory (Diyang Li)
local LLMs (Cory Phillips)
model adaptation such as PEFT, merging (Hangyu Zhou)
modular models (Hangyu Zhou)
multimodality (Hangyu Zhou, Prof. Lee, Tushaar Gangavarapu)
natural language processing (Cory Phillips, Darren Key, John Kowalczyk, Kelsey Liu, Prof. Lee, Pun Chaixanien, Tushaar Gangavarapu)
optimal transport (Yuanqi Du)
optimization algorithms (Diyang Li)
reinforcement learning (Janna Lin, Johnny Wang)
robot learning (Janna Lin)
sampling (Yuanqi Du)
search (Amirah Ricks,, Pranav Mishra)
social media analysis (Prof. Lee)
statistical learning (Diyang Li)
supervised learning (Amirah Ricks)
unsupervised learning (John Kowalczyk)

And below are some "Track 1"-style project suggestions passed on from Prof. Ellis, the Spring 2024 instructor for CS 4701.

AI for playing board games, computer games, card games, party games, etc., possibly using learning. For example:

Atari games, Super Smash Brothers, Tetris
Word games like "Codenames" and "the Wikipedia game"
Board games like Bughouse chess, Pentago, Machi Koro, Onitama, Risk, "Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe"
Social deception games: Mafia, Avalon
Generic card game AI, where the game rules are an input to the algorithm
Poker (of which there are many possible variants)
Pokemon Battles

Transcribing handwritten characters, either from pixels or motor trajectories. You could also try automatically translating Manga, and you don't need to confine yourself to the same writing system as is used in English.
Creative applications of artificial intelligence:

Creating aesthetically pleasing geometric designs, for example through genetic algorithms. Electric Sheep can be a source of inspiration.
Automatically making/composing music, from lyrics such as rap rhymes to beats such as those found in electronic music
Automatically creating multi-cuisine recipes

Investigate multiagent reasoning, such as using modal logic (Russell and Norvig Chapter 10.4) or Rational Speech Acts.
Build a system that "synthesizes programs": given a specification of what a computer program should do, search or plan through a space of source code to find a program that satisfies that specification. Examples are SmartEdit, FlashFill, and works in the genetic programming literature
Visual Question-Answering: build a system which can answer questions about a visual scene by parsing natural language into a logical expression or program, parsing a visual scene into discrete objects with attributes, and then resolving the query symbolically. ViperGPT could be inspiration.
Robot motion planning, combining discrete search/planning methods with continuous optimization/RRT, possibly hierarchically. You may find it useful to write or use a preexisting simulator for a basic robot gripper/objects it can manipulate
Equation discovery/symbolic regression using genetic algorithms. When are the pros and cons against parametric approaches?
AI for accessible/smart user interfaces

Eye-swipe user interfaces, or other uses of an eye-tracker such as for typing and mousing
Sign language understanding
Smart voice-based interfaces
Autocomplete-like features for graphical user interfaces, such as predicting what menu item the user will click next and highlighting it

Advice/prediction systems based on probabilistic inference and/or machine learning

Advisors for taking care of houseplants or pets
Predicting financial movements, such as cryptocurrency prices based on twitter
Health applications, such as advising on skin disease or diet/exercise
Other tasks like advising on fantasy football or business applications like customer volume

For example starting with an image of a crossword puzzle, parsing it into symbolic form, and then solving it