SDSU DiLab Partners with Illumina to Assess AI Opportunities for Workflow Improvement
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Students in the Digital Innovation Lab (DiLab) at SDSU’s Fowler College of Business recently completed a project with Illumina, a San Diego-based DNA-sequencing company, to determine how AI-enabled processes could improve the company’s financial and operational procedures.
The project’s objective was to identify and recommend potential AI solutions for workflow bottlenecks, manual processes and other operational anomalies, while maintaining the DiLab’s philosophy of humane digital transformation. The experience also exposed students to the practical considerations involved in evaluating AI applications in organizational settings, a key component of Fowler College of Business’s AI-powered learning efforts.
The student team gathered their data through workflow analysis and a series of employee and managerial interviews to determine Illumina’s technical foundations while pinpointing system improvements.
When the project concluded at the end of May, the DiLab student team provided Illumina’s management with a report that outlined AI-powered solutions that offered improved systems integration while offering employees better operational oversight with less manual labor.
While Illumina gained valuable insight that can allow them to improve productivity, the DiLab students gained hands-on experience working with real-world operations.
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“This experience showed me how complex digital transformation can be inside a global company,” said Avishka Wickramaratna, an SDSU junior majoring in information systems. “We learned to move beyond generic AI use cases and think carefully about feasibility, governance, and real business value.”
Management information systems professor, Kaveh Abhari said the experience offered students a glimpse into what they can expect in their post-graduation careers.
“This engagement cultivated not only technical competence, but also professional confidence, communication skills, and the ability to navigate ambiguity in high-stakes organizational settings,” said Abhari. “The experience transformed the classroom into a living laboratory where future business leaders learned that the next era of innovation depends not simply on building intelligent systems, but on designing intelligent organizations that integrate technology with human workflows, institutional trust, and responsible governance.”
