Terrier Intelligence

Terrier Intelligence is a free, student-built directory of the AI ecosystem at Boston University. It brings research labs, student clubs, courses, professors, and campus AI news into one place so you can see how to get involved — whether that means joining a lab, finding a club, or picking an AI-focused class. Resources can be filtered by interest areas such as NLP, computer vision, AI ethics, healthcare, and data science. Browsing is completely open: there is no account, login, or fee required to use the directory.

No. Terrier Intelligence is an independent, student-run resource and is not operated by Boston University or any of its departments, institutes, or official programs. It is not an official BU service, and it is not affiliated with groups like AIDA or the Hariri Institute, even though we link to their pages. All organization names, logos, and course details belong to their respective owners and are used to point you toward official sources. For enrollment, research positions, or anything official, always confirm directly with BU and the relevant department.

It is built mainly for BU students who want to get into AI — undergraduates looking for a first research role, students choosing courses, or anyone wanting to find a community around machine learning. Faculty benefit too: a listing gives a lab or course visibility and can signal when a professor is open to undergraduate researchers. Prospective students and anyone curious about AI at BU are welcome to browse as well. Because the site is public and needs no account, you can explore freely and come back whenever you are ready to reach out to a lab, club, or instructor.

Each section reflects a different way to engage with AI at BU. Labs are research groups you can join, usually by contacting the professor who runs them. Clubs are student communities and extracurriculars with regular meetings and events. Classes are AI-related courses, tagged by level and by whether they teach machine learning or simply encourage using AI tools. Professors are profiles of AI-involved faculty — their research areas, the labs and classes they lead, and whether they are open to undergraduate researchers. News is short, dated items about AI happenings at BU, like new grants, lab launches, or hackathon wins. Use the directory filters to move between them.

Open the directory, select Research, and filter by the interest areas you care about, such as NLP, computer vision, or AI and healthcare. Each lab lists its research focus and any confirmed faculty connections. Because openings and contact details change frequently, use the linked official pages to confirm current availability directly with the lab or professor before assuming a position is open.

Course level and interest tags help you narrow the Classes section to the right fit, from intro through graduate. Whether a class is core to machine learning or simply welcomes AI tools can vary by department and instructor, so treat each listing as a starting point and confirm prerequisites, current sections, and course policies in BU's official course listings.

Yes. Every card has a bookmark icon — tap it to save that lab, club, class, or professor for later. It is a quick way to build a shortlist while you browse without losing track of what caught your eye. Saving works without an account for now, so your bookmarks live in your current browser. Broader personalization, including accounts that sync your saved items across devices and optional alerts for when a lab or club opens, is planned for a later phase. Until then, bookmarking is the simplest way to keep your options together as you explore.

Interest tags are a shared set of topics — like NLP and large language models, computer vision, robotics, AI ethics and policy, AI and healthcare, data science, and generative AI tools — applied across every section of the site. In any listing view you can select one or more tags to narrow results to the areas you care about, and the same tags appear on labs, clubs, classes, and professors so you can follow a topic across different kinds of involvement. Selecting a tag filters the directory instantly. The taxonomy is intentionally flat and may grow as more content is added.

TerrierGPT is Boston University's secure gateway to leading generative AI models. BU students, faculty, and staff can sign in with Kerberos and use models from providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta without creating separate accounts. It is free for the BU community, and BU says prompts are not used to train external models. TerrierGPT is not approved for restricted-use data, and you should always follow your instructors' and BU's policies on acceptable AI use.

Use the Suggest an addition button in the site header and fill out the short form. You will enter the basics — name, type, a description, interest areas, and a link — and note whether you are affiliated with the group you are suggesting. Submissions go into a review queue rather than publishing instantly, so we can verify details and source an official logo before anything goes live. Anyone can suggest an entry, whether it is your own group or one you think is missing. If we need more information to confirm a listing, we will follow up using the contact details you provide.

A dedicated claiming feature, where a verified club, lab, or professor can edit their own card directly, is planned for a later phase. For now, the fastest way to fix or update a listing is the Suggest an addition form, which also handles corrections and updates to existing entries. Tell us what has changed and confirm your affiliation, and we will update it after a quick review. As the site grows, we plan to reach out to featured groups individually so they can take ownership of their cards. Until that is live, the form is the right channel for any edit.

Every logo on the site is the organization's real logo, taken from its own official website, social profile, or press materials. We never generate or fabricate logos — if we cannot find or confirm a real one, the card shows a neutral placeholder instead. If your group's logo is missing or outdated, use the Suggest an addition form and include a link to the official version in the URL or description field.

Your listing can indicate whether you are currently open to undergraduate researchers, which is one of the main things students look for. To set or update that status, submit the details through the Suggest an addition form, and we will reflect it on your profile after review. We only publish information that is already public, and we use your public BU email — we never collect or post personal or private contact details. If your availability changes during the year, send an update through the same form so students are not reaching out based on outdated information.

Listings show when they were last verified, and we work to keep details current, but Terrier Intelligence is maintained by volunteers and information can fall out of date — especially fast-moving things like open research positions or club meeting times. Treat the directory as a well-organized starting point, not an official record. Before you act on a listing — applying to a lab, enrolling in a course, or contacting a professor — confirm the specifics with the source directly and with BU's official pages. If you spot something wrong or outdated, please report it so we can fix it for the next person.

We only display information that is already publicly available — details from official BU faculty pages, department sites, and organizations' own public websites and social profiles. For professors, that means public research interests, affiliations, and a public BU email address; we never scrape, store, or publish personal phone numbers, private emails, or any non-public contact information. Faculty headshots, when shown, come from public BU faculty pages. The goal is simply to help students find and connect with the right people through channels those people already make public. If something is inaccurate, please send a correction.

Use the Suggest an addition button in the header and choose Update an existing listing. Tell us which listing is affected and exactly what needs to change, and we will review it. Confirming your affiliation helps us verify and prioritize the correction. Because the site is volunteer-maintained, a quick, specific message helps us resolve errors faster.