Trade-school-style fundamentals: power, cooling, compute, cabling, networking, and monitoring. Scholars work as operators, not just learners. Every system they touch is real. Every build is documented.
Scholar-mentors teaching APS students is a core learning mechanism inside the curriculum. Mentorship is how scholars reinforce mastery, not an extracurricular add-on.
Energy → Silicon → Infrastructure → Models → Applications → Quantum
Every layer is built on the one below it. Nothing is learned in a vacuum.
AARI uses open-source tools and industry-supported platforms to give students practical exposure to modern computing environments in an educational setting.
Students learn through guided use of modern platforms and tools that help them build practical knowledge and confidence.
Enterprise Kubernetes platform for container orchestration at scale
Private cloud infrastructure for managing compute, storage, and networking
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the OS of enterprise infrastructure
Automation and configuration management at enterprise scale
AI doesn't only live in the data center. AARI teaches the full spectrum, from a Raspberry Pi at the edge to a GPU cluster in the cloud.
Edge AI Platform
Students deploy AI inference at the edge using NVIDIA Jetson devices. Jetson hardware shows how AI interacts with sensors, images, and physical systems in real-world settings.
IoT & Embedded Computing
Raspberry Pi teaches students the fundamentals of embedded computing, IoT integration, and low-power systems design. It's the training ground where Linux administration, networking, and hardware interface all meet.
AARI helps students understand the foundations behind modern computing so they can build stronger technical intuition.
Students physically install and cable enterprise servers. No click-to-deploy here. You understand every component before you virtualize anything.
Students explore networking, storage, and secure systems concepts through supervised lab activities and guided projects. Security awareness is built in from the start.
Students explore storage concepts including SAN, NAS, NVMe, and object storage through supervised lab activities and guided projects.
We teach students how AI systems work from the underlying computing environment through real-world applications, helping them understand both concepts and practice.
Power systems, UPS, PDUs, PUE efficiency, data center power architecture
CPU, GPU, TPU, FPGA, accelerated compute, hardware architecture, NVIDIA CUDA
Bare metal, virtualization, containers, Kubernetes, OpenShift, networking, security
ML training, fine-tuning, inference optimization, MLOps, model registry and deployment
Real AI products, robotics, automation, the capstone, not the starting point
Quantum computing foundations using NVIDIA CUDA-Q, the frontier of compute where classical and quantum meet
The robot isn't the goal. It's proof the pipeline works. Our students don't just use AI tools. They understand and build every layer of the systems that power them.
Two tracks running concurrently at the 100,000 sq ft Kidd partnership site. This is the activation of the scholar-to-mentor model at scale.
AUC scholars. Hands-on data center and systems operations at the Kidd facility. Not a simulation. Real hardware, real infrastructure, real operator responsibility.
Scholars teaching APS students on site. ROBOKONG brings an existing pipeline of APS students already engaged in robotics as the mentee population.
Kidd / ROBOKONG is a strategic partnership site that expands AARI's current capacity. 100,000 sq ft. Activates June 2026. The APS robotics student pipeline already on site feeds directly into the scholar-to-mentor model as the mentee population. This is not AARI's permanent home.
Contact us to learn more about the AARI Systems Lab, partnership opportunities, or equipment donations.