Summer Enrichment Spotlight: Sultan Al Juhani Wins First Place Prize at the AFI Global Innovation Challenge and Conducts AI Research at UIUC

Sultan Al Juhani (Cohort 16), a rising sophomore majoring in Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, is spending his summer making bold strides in both global innovation and scientific research. In June 2025, with support from the KGSP, Sultan traveled to Seoul, South Korea, to participate in the AFI Global Pitch Challenge at the Organoid Developer Conference.

^{Sultan presenting at the AFI Global Pitch Challenge}

^{Sultan's Team}

At the conference, “[Sultan] had the honor of doing just that. With a little help from a toy rabbit named Brian, [the team] introduced [their] vision to reduce animal testing in science through a ML model, SkipLab.” Sultan and his team presented their idea, earning first place and the $7,000 grand prize, a major accomplishment for the young innovators. When reflecting on his experience at the AFI Global Idea Challenge, Sultan expressed deep gratitude to the KGSP team for supporting his travel to Seoul and ensuring his team could present their pitch on a global stage.

^{Award Presentation}

For the remainder of Summer 2025, Sultan is conducting research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s FoDOMMaT REU. This opportunity was made possible by a strategic partnership that KGSP Enrichment has developed with the UIUC research program. There, Sultan is working at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. His research focuses on building an ML model powered by the DELTA supercomputer to predict the stopping power and range of projectile protons in materials. Relevant to present-day advances in technology, Sultan reports that his project is “connecting AI with real-world challenges in nuclear engineering and radiation modeling.”

^{Presenting his findings to peers and professors}