---
title: UB Virtual Student Assistant (UB-VSA)
emoji: 🎓
colorFrom: pink
colorTo: blue
sdk: docker
pinned: false
short_description: AI assistant for University at Buffalo students.
---

# UB Virtual Student Assistant (UB-VSA)  
**RAG-powered chatbot for UB admissions, visa & campus life questions**

[![HF Space Status](https://img.shields.io/badge/🤗 Spaces-Live-brightgreen.svg)](https://huggingface.co/spaces/TeamSAS/UB_VSA)  
[![Docker](https://img.shields.io/badge/docker-ready-blue)](Dockerfile) [![License: MIT](https://img.shields.io/badge/License-MIT-yellow.svg)](#license)

UB-VSA is a **retrieval-augmented conversational agent** that gives accurate, source-grounded answers about the University at Buffalo, with special focus on the needs of international students (F-1/OPT, I-20, course selection, housing, etc.).
It combines:

| Layer | Tech |
|-------|------|
| **Retriever** | FAISS dense vectors (`BAAI/bge-small-en-v1.5`) + keyword hybrid search |
| **Reranker** | `cross-encoder/ms-marco-MiniLM-L-6-v2` |
| **Fine-tuning** | LoRA / QLoRA adapters on `microsoft/phi-1_5` with RAFT |
| **API** | Flask (backend) |
| **UI** | Flask (+ vanilla JS) single-page chat |
---

Check out the configuration reference at https://huggingface.co/docs/hub/spaces-config-reference