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Macomb Today
By the People, for the People
Laude Institute Selects SREGym for Slingshot Program
Illinois CS students develop AI-powered platform to benchmark cloud reliability engineering
Apr. 6, 2026 at 9:18pm
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An AI-powered platform to benchmark and train the next generation of cloud reliability engineers.Macomb TodayA team of students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Siebel School of Computing and Data Science has been selected by the Laude Institute's Slingshot program for their project, SREGym. SREGym is an AI-native platform that provides a live training ground for AI agents to diagnose and mitigate failures in cloud-native systems, serving as a comprehensive benchmark for evaluating AI-driven Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) capabilities.
Why it matters
As modern computing systems become increasingly complex and dynamic, the need for effective AI-powered tools to ensure reliable cloud infrastructure has become critical. SREGym aims to address this gap by providing a realistic, open-source testbed for developing and evaluating the next generation of agentic AI for SRE, which could unlock significant advancements in cloud reliability and resilience.
The details
The SREGym project is led by CS students Jackson Clark, Yiming Su, Lily Gniedziejko, and Saad Mohammad Rafid Pial. It was selected by the Laude Institute's Slingshot program, which supports researchers and scientists in turning their ideas into real-world impact. SREGym provides a live training environment for AI agents to diagnose and mitigate different failure patterns in a cloud-native system, serving as a comprehensive benchmark for evaluating the effectiveness and safety of AI-driven SRE.
- The SREGym project was selected by the Laude Institute's Slingshot program in April 2026.
- The project is an ongoing effort, with contributions from research groups at Microsoft, University of Washington, University of Toronto, and the University of Illinois.
The players
Laude Institute
An organization focused on accelerating and funding impactful work in computer science and artificial intelligence.
SREGym
An AI-native platform developed by a team of students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, providing a live training ground for AI agents to diagnose and mitigate failures in cloud-native systems.
Jackson Clark
A CS PhD student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a co-leader of the SREGym project.
Yiming Su
A CS PhD student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a co-leader of the SREGym project.
Lily Gniedziejko
A CS undergraduate student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a core member of the SREGym project team.
What they’re saying
“This is a very special group of students who are willing to think wildly and execute in hard ways.”
— Tianyin Xu, Associate Professor, Computer Science
“Our answer is to set the standard and unlock a whole new evolution of AI for system reliability engineering.”
— Jackson Clark
“Lily is amazing! Last summer when Lily joined the group, she hadn't heard of Kubernetes. A year later, she is leading several initiatives in SREGym with new ideas and creative engineering. She works extremely hard and treats the lab as a home.”
— Tianyin Xu, Associate Professor, Computer Science
What’s next
The SREGym team plans to continue developing and expanding the platform, with the goal of setting the standard for AI-driven Site Reliability Engineering and unlocking new advancements in cloud infrastructure resilience.
The takeaway
The SREGym project highlights the innovative work being done by students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to address critical challenges in cloud computing and AI. By creating a comprehensive benchmark for evaluating AI-powered SRE, the team is paving the way for more reliable and resilient cloud infrastructure, which will have far-reaching impacts across industries.
