Bio-Eng-LLM AI Assist: A modular chatbot platform for interdisciplinary research and education

This article presents Bio-Eng-LLM AI chatbot Assist, a versatile platform designed to support interactive learning and research across multiple disciplines. Initially developed for biomass research, the system’s capabilities have since expanded to serve broader educational and scientific domains. It integrates large language models ( LLM s) with advanced tools for document analysis, real-time file and web data integration, image understanding, and speech recognition. At the core of the platform lies a Retrieval Augmented Generation ( RAG ) framework, which improves the contextual relevance and factual accuracy of responses by incorporating external information sources. Bio-Eng-LLM also includes image generation via diffusion models and secure web-based search and summarization features. Its user-friendly interface supports multimodal interactions – text, image, and voice – enabling dynamic and personalized assistance in academic environments. By simplifying access to complex information and promoting interdisciplinary collaboration, Bio-Eng-LLM fosters AI literacy and facilitates both knowledge discovery and communication.