ITS Employee Wins Grand Prize at Salesforce TDX Hackathon

Congratulations to Vivian Abey, Programmer Analyst in Information Technology Services (ITS), who was recently awarded the Grand Prize at the Salesforce TrailblazerDX (TDX) Hackathon. Vivian stood out among a global field of developers for her innovative use of AI to solve complex administrative challenges in higher education. 

Her award-winning project, the ED Admit Evaluation Agent, was developed as a pilot to demonstrate how AI can streamline the student application review process. Built using Salesforce Agentforce and Data Cloud, the tool synthesizes complex data into concise summaries and side-by-side candidate comparisons within Slack.

Key Highlights of the Pilot

Vivian integrated strict "ethical guardrails" to prevent bias and ensure demographic data remains protected. It is human-centric and follows a "Human in the Loop" model, requiring manual confirmation for all decisions. The agent also pulls from nine different data sources to provide a holistic view of applicants.

While the ED Admit Evaluation Agent is currently a test project and not live or in use, Vivian’s achievement highlights the cutting-edge talent within USD’s ITS team and the exciting potential for future AI-driven efficiency at USD.