Assistant in action

Inspiration

We know friends who are working in research that find it difficult to search for research articles relevant to what they are searching for and it takes a large chunk of their time simply for discovery alone especially if they are researching something very niche.

What it does

The Proactive Research Assistant automatically monitors what a research student is reading or exploring on academic websites (e.g., arXiv, Google Scholar, IEEE). It proactively suggests relevant research papers with %relevancy appearing as a floating assistant window. Offers options to hide suggestions manually or save them for later.

How we built it

We created a Chrome Extension that creates a content script to detect current research context by reading the page. It fetches related papers via arxiv API and suggestions are displayed in a floating popup with clickable links. Fetching scripts are based in a background script file to bypass CORS.

Challenges we ran into

CORS restrictions blocking API calls and not allowing suggestions to be displayed. Making sure that the assistant only triggers on academic papers. Getting the saved articles to show. Developing a working demo that encompasses the core idea of our project in just three days.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Building a functional prototype. Atleast functional in what its main purpose is to demonstrate proactive contextual suggestions in a popup sidebar. Integrating AI to allow for deeper analysis and increase the accuracy of suggestions.

What we learned

How to develop a Chrome Extension with content scripts that interact with web pages. Handling CORS and API restrictions and fetching data from third party sources. The scope of what is possible and ways AI could be utilized to solve problems around us.

What's next for A-Team

Expand to support more academic websites and databases as well as work with PDFs. Implement machine learning models to improve predictions overtime. Integrate adaptive learning to personalize suggestions. Allow for summaries and citations to be added directly from the popup to the document being worked on.