Led by NSF, and in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Google, Amazon, Intel and Accenture, the National AI Research Institutes will act as connections in a broader nationwide network to pursue transformational advances in a range of economic sectors, and science and engineering fields — from food system security to next-generation edge networks.
“In the tradition of USDA-NIFA investments, these new institutes leverage the scientific power of U.S. land-grant universities informed by close partnership with farmers, producers, educators and innovators to provide sustainable crop production solutions and address these pressing societal challenges,” said USDA-NIFA Director Carrie Castille. “These innovation centers will speed our ability to meet the critical needs in the future agricultural workforce, providing equitable and fair market access, increasing nutrition security and providing tools for climate-smart agriculture.”
With a new $20 million federal grant, UC Merced becomes part of a multi-institutional research collaborative to develop artificial intelligence — or AI — solutions to tackle some of agriculture’s biggest challenges related to water management, climate change and integration of new technology into farming.
The new institute is one of 11 launched this year by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and among two funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture-National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The newly announced AgAID Institute is shorthand for the collaborative USDA-NIFA Institute for Agricultural AI for Transforming Workforce and Decision Support.
The AgAID Institute features four core institutions: UC Merced; Washington State University (WSU), the lead campus; Oregon State University; and the University of Virginia.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today an investment of $220 million to establish 11 artificial intelligence (AI) institutes, each receiving $20 million over five years. One of these, The Institute for Learning-enabled Optimization at Scale (TILOS), will be led by the University of California San Diego in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; San Diego-based National University; the University of Pennsylvania; the University of Texas at Austin; and Yale University. TILOS is also partially supported by Intel Corporation.
University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley Engineering
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The National Science Foundation has awarded $20 million over five years to the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Southern California to establish the National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Institute for Advances in Optimization. The award is among 11 new National AI Research Institutes announced today by NSF.
The AI Institute for Advances in Optimization aims to deliver a paradigm shift in automated decision-making at massive scales by fusing AI and mathematical optimization, to achieve breakthroughs that neither field can achieve independently.
After three years of initial evaluation and analyses for an improved cyberinfrastructure (CI) for the National Science Foundation’s Major Facilities, the University of Notre Dame has joined five other research universities in launching CI CoE: CI Compass, a NSF Center of Excellence dedicated to navigating the Major Facilities’ data lifecycle.
CI Compass will enhance the overall NSF CI ecosystem by providing expertise where needed to enhance and evolve the Major Facilities CI, capturing and disseminating CI knowledge and best practices that power MF scientific breakthroughs, and brokering connections to enable knowledge sharing between and across MF CI professionals and the broader CI community.
Researchers at the University of Virginia’s Biocomplexity Institute are founding partners of a national research institute that will develop artificial intelligence-driven solutions for some of agriculture’s biggest problems: labor, water, weather and climate change.
The $20 million institute, called AgAID, includes UVA, seven other top research universities and two technology companies. It’s one of 11 launched by the National Science Foundation and among two the U.S. Department of Agriculture-National Institute of Food and Agriculture has funded so far in 2021. AgAID Institute is short for USDA-NIFA Institute for Agricultural AI for Transforming Workforce and Decision Support, and is led by Washington State University.
Iowa State University, College of Engineering News
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The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the establishment of 11 new NSF National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes – including one led by Iowa State University – building on the first round of seven institutes funded in 2020. The combined investment of $360 million ($220 million in 2021 and $140 million in 2020) expands the reach of those institutes to include a total of 40 states and the District of Columbia.
One of the 11 institutes, called the AI Institute for Intelligent Cyberinfrastructure with Computational Learning in the Environment (ICICLE), is led by The Ohio State University, with Iowa State Professor Hongwei Zhang of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering leading the edge wireless component of that project.
ICICLE will build the next generation of cyberinfrastructure that will make AI easy for scientists to use and promote its further democratization.
Washington State University will lead a new federally funded research institute to take the agriculture industry further into the future via artificial intelligence.
The USDA-NIFA Institute for Agricultural AI for Transforming Workforce and Decision Support — also known as the AgAID Institute — will look at how AI can help tackle farming challenges related to climate change, weather, water supply and labor.
To that end, WSU researchers will lead a coalition of colleges and universities as well as private-sector partners through the AgAID Institute, which will be funded through a five-year, $20 million U.S. Department of Agriculture grant.
The Daily Californian student newspaper, Andie Liu
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“The U.S. National Science Foundation has long supported research across a variety of methods and applications in optimization,” said Georgia-Ann Klutke, the NSF program director responsible for overseeing the Georgia Tech grant, in an email. “The Institutes are the first investment at this scale for methods that explicitly integrate AI, and the first at this scale to apply optimization methods to solve complex computational problems that were previously out of reach.”
Alper Atamtürk, the UC Berkeley lead for the institute and a campus professor, said a team of campus faculty researchers in the industrial engineering and operations research department and the electrical engineering and computer science department reached out to universities with expertise in those areas to form a team.
Georgia Institute of Technology, College of Computing; Atlanta, GA
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Georgia Tech is a major partner in a new National Science Foundation (NSF) Artificial Intelligence Research Institute focused on adult learning in online education, it was announced today. Led by the Georgia Research Alliance, the National AI Institute for Adult Learning in Online Education (ALOE) is one of 11 new NSF institutes created as part of an investment totaling $220 million.
The ALOE Institute will develop new AI theories and techniques for enhancing the quality of online education for lifelong learning and workforce development. According to some projections, about 100 million American workers will need to be reskilled or upskilled over the next decade. With the increase of AI and automation, said Co-Principal Investigator and Georgia Tech lead Professor Ashok Goel, many jobs will be redefined.
Reid Simmons, a research professor in the Robotics Institute (RI) and the Computer Science Department (CSD), will lead CMU’s involvement in the AI Institute for Collaborative Assistance and Responsive Interaction for Networked Groups (AI-CARING), which seeks to develop AI systems for caregiving environments.
AI-CARING will be led by the Georgia Institute of Technology with partial funding from Amazon and Google. The institute will initially focus on assisting in the care of the elderly by seeking to understand and manage the interaction between humans and AI agents. Researchers will develop methods to teach AI systems to learn a person’s needs, preferences and caregiving network, and enable the systems to adapt as those change over time. The tasks will involve not only coordinating a variety of AI agents — like voice-controlled assistants, smart devices or chatbots — but also managing human caregivers ranging from medical and assistance providers to family.
Vipin Chaudhary, the Kevin J. Kranzusch Professor and chair of the Department of Computer and Data Sciences at Case Western Reserve University, will play a key role in new $20 million artificial intelligence (AI) institute that is part of an expansive federal initiative that aims to bring the power of AI to more Americans in a variety of ways.
Chaudhary is co-primary investigator on the new grant announced today by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). He will collaborate with Ohio State computer science and engineering professor Dhabaleshwar Panda, the primary investigator on the project, which will focus on building AI systems for agricultural and wildlife management systems.
This was the year everyone wanted to go to law school.
The number of people applying for admission to law school this fall surged nearly 13%, making it the largest year-over-year percentage increase since 2002, according to the latest data from the Law School Admission Council.
And they were an impressive bunch. The number of people applying with LSAT scores in the highest band of 175 to 180 more than doubled from 732 last year to 1,487 this year.
It’s a tricky spot for colleges, after enrollments declined last spring and some of the richest schools granted discounts. Dorms and dining halls, which help bring in revenue, also sat emptier than usual.
This semester, they’ll have the opposite problem. Harvard, in Massachusetts, is expecting its biggest freshman class since World War II. Pomona College in California, said in an email to students that the incoming class will be its largest ever.
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The eScience Institute’s Data Science for Social Good program is now accepting applications for student fellows and project leads for the 2021 summer session. Fellows will work with academic researchers, data scientists and public stakeholder groups on data-intensive research projects that will leverage data science approaches to address societal challenges in areas such as public policy, environmental impacts and more. Student applications due 2/15 – learn more and apply here. DSSG is also soliciting project proposals from academic researchers, public agencies, nonprofit entities and industry who are looking for an opportunity to work closely with data science professionals and students on focused, collaborative projects to make better use of their data. Proposal submissions are due 2/22.
There is an old programmer joke (generally attributed to Jamie Zawinski) that goes: “Some people, when confronted with a problem, think ‘I know, I’ll use regular expressions.’
