The state debate champ is giving her Michigan State University team an edge

Joanna Gusis, a 2022 graduate of Glenbrook North High School and state champion debater, has been interested in computer programming since her childhood in Northbrook. She found a way to use that skill to give her university debate team a competitive edge.

"Even starting in elementary school at Westmoor, teachers were interested in teaching kids code," Gusis said. "They saw it as something valuable to invest time in."

Gusis took a computer science course her senior year at Glenbrook North.

"That cemented the idea that this was something I wanted to study," she said.

Ultimately, her interests led her to pursue two bachelor's degrees at Michigan State University, where she is currently a junior majoring in statistics with a minor in computer science for one degree and in political theory and Constitutional democracy for the second degree.

Along with help from her older brother, David, and a couple of MSU alums, Gusis designed Debatabase, a proprietary software launched just a few months ago that helps the Michigan State debate team prepare for competition by tracking their opponents' previous arguments.

"We think the project gives us a competitive edge," she said. "The same way a football team does not share its plays on the Internet, the program is not downloadable. It's definitely proprietary or confidential to the debate team. It gives us an edge and we don't want to give it away to our competitors."

The project began when the MSU debate coaches mentioned the idea of using artificial intelligence in debate, Gusis said. "It's hard to deny the whole world is looking to use data and AI to make more informed and successful decisions," she said.

After that "abstract" discussion, Gusis came home for the summer and discussed the idea with David, a neurospace engineer and computer scientist three years her elder, she said.

"I asked my brother how we would code one tricky detail," Joanna said. "That conversation, which began over the dinner table, quickly and inadvertently moved to how we could make the project happen."

The Gusis siblings worked all summer.

"As two good computer science lovers, we thought, 'Why not? Let's try it.'" Joanna said. "We coded and coded and learned."

In May, MSU hosted its first debate reunion, where Joanna reconnected with Howard Akumiah, a 2014 graduate who founded Betty Labs, which builds consumer social apps for sports fans.

"He (Akumiah) immediately saw the vision and understood the value it could add to our preparations. He wanted to help out and set up a series of phone and Zoom calls," Joanna said. "He brought along Matt (Ao, his chief technical officer), who helped with the nitty gritty programming."

In debate tournaments, competitors usually know members of the other teams, she explained. About 45 minutes before competition begins, each team is given an opponent, which side of a topic they will argue, and the names of the judges, Gusis said.

"In the 45 minutes that follow, a lot goes on," she said. "For example, we discuss the position the opponent usually takes and how you should respond, or the judge's preferences."

That information is typically collected and stored in the heads of debaters and coaches over the years, Gusis said. Debatabase keeps it in a quickly accessible location.

"The idea is to take information that otherwise is mostly anecdotal and standardize and quickly access it and do a statistical analysis or use AI to synthesize the information," she said. "The aim is to take the information gathered and make it easier to use data-analysis-type decisions."

Since the Debatabase app was implemented a few months ago. MSU has participated in three debates.

"The more we use it, the smarter it gets," Gusis said. It will be more and more exciting and more and more accurate as we continue to use it."

The team did "quite well" at those tournaments. "It certainly helped," she said of Debatabase.

MSU's Director of Debate Carly Watson remarked, "I think the biggest quantitative benefit from the software is the speed at which we can prepare for debates. Where some preparation tasks used to take us 10-plus minutes, it's now a process that takes only seconds. That's a big difference when you think about debates where you might only have 30 minutes overall to prepare."

MSU participated in an invite-only round robin tournament at the University of Kentucky, which invites only the seven best teams in the country.

Gusis and her debate partner, sophomore Stephen Lewis, placed third.

In the tournament after that, MSU had two teams place in the Sweet 16. Lewis and Gusis were undefeated in the preliminary events.

MSU debate has competed in the National Debate Tournament for 27 consecutive years, said Alex Tekip, public relations manager for the university.