Source: USDA, 7/29/21
Today, the U.S.
Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture
(USDA-NIFA) and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a $220
million investment in 11 new NSF-led Artificial Intelligence Research
Institutes. USDA-NIFA and other agencies and organizations have partnered with
NSF to pursue transformational advances in a range of economic sectors and
science and engineering fields — from food system security to next-generation
edge networks. The
new investment builds on the first round of seven Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Research Institutes funded in 2020, totaling $140 million last year. “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 Dr. Carrie Castille. “These innovation centers will speed our ability to meet critical needs in the future agricultural workforce, providing equitable and fair market access, increasing nutrition security and providing tools for climate-smart agriculture.” NSF’s investment will result in AI-based technologies that bring about a range of advances: helping older adults lead more independent lives and improving the quality of their care; transforming AI into a more accessible “plug-and-play” technology; creating solutions to improve agriculture and food supply chains; enhancing adult online learning by introducing AI as a foundational element; and supporting underrepresented students in elementary to post-doctoral STEM education to improve equity and representation in AI research. To
achieve investment goals, NSF partnered with USDA-NIFA, U.S. Department of
Homeland Security (DHS), Google, Amazon, Intel and Accenture. “I am delighted to announce the establishment of new NSF National AI Research Institutes as we look to expand into all 50 states,” said National Science Foundation Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “These institutes are hubs for academia, industry and government to accelerate discovery and innovation in AI. Inspiring talent and ideas everywhere in this important area will lead to new capabilities that improve our lives from medicine to entertainment to transportation and cybersecurity and position us in the vanguard of competitiveness and prosperity.” Building
on the seven awards funded in 2020, this second round of awards expands the
reach of the AI Institutes to include a total of 37 states. The new awards,
each at about $20 million over five years, will support 11 institutes spanning
seven research areas in AI: Human-AI Interaction and Collaboration, AI for
Advances in Optimization, AI and Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, AI in Computer
and Network Systems, AI in Dynamic Systems, AI-Augmented Learning, and
AI-Driven Innovation in Agriculture and the Food System. Below
are descriptions of the 11 new AI Research Institutes: The USDA-NIFA Institute for
Agricultural AI for Transforming Workforce and Decision Support (AgAID). Led
by Washington State University, this institute will integrate AI methods into
agriculture operations for prediction, decision support, and robotics-enabled agriculture
to address complex agricultural challenges. The AgAID Institute uses a unique
adopt-adapt-amplify approach to develop and deliver AI solutions to agriculture
that address pressing challenges related to labor, water, weather and climate
change. The institute involves farmers, workers, managers and policy makers in
the development of these solutions, as well as in AI training and education,
which promotes equity by increasing the technological skill levels of the
next-generation agricultural workforce. This
institute is funded by USDA-NIFA. The USDA-NIFA AI Institute
for Resilient Agriculture (AIIRA). Led by Iowa State
University, this institute will transform agriculture through
innovative AI-driven digital twins that model plants
at an unprecedented scale. This approach is enabled by advances in
computational theory, AI algorithms, and tools for crop improvement and
production for resiliency to climate change. In addition, AIIRA
will promote the study of cyber-agricultural systems at the
intersection of plant science, agronomics, and AI; power education and
workforce development through formal and informal educational
activities, focusing on Native American bidirectional engagement and
farmer programs; and drive knowledge transfer through partnerships with
industry, producers, and federal and state agencies. This institute
is funded by USDA-NIFA. NSF AI Institute for
Collaborative Assistance and Responsive Interaction for Networked Groups
(AI-CARING). Led by the Georgia Institute of
Technology (Georgia Tech), this institute will seek to create a vibrant, fully
developed discipline focused on personalized, longitudinal (over months and
years) collaborative AI systems that learn individual models of human behavior
and how they change over time, and use that knowledge to better collaborate and
communicate in caregiving environments. The collaborative AI Partners in Care
developed as part of this institute will help support a growing population of
older adults sustain independence, improve quality of life, and increase
effectiveness of care coordination across the care network. This
institute is partially funded by Amazon and Google. NSF AI Institute for Advances
in Optimization. Led
by Georgia Tech, this institute will revolutionize decision-making on a large
scale by fusing AI and mathematical optimization into intelligent systems that
will achieve breakthroughs that neither field can achieve independently. The
institute will create pathways from high school to undergraduate and graduate
education and workforce development training for AI in engineering that will
empower a generation of underrepresented students and teachers to join the AI
revolution. It will also create a sustainable ecosystem for AI, combining
education, research, entrepreneurship, and the public at large. The institute
will demonstrate foundational advances on use cases in energy, resilience and
sustainability, supply chains, and circuit design and control. The institute
has innovative plans for workforce education and broadening participation,
including substantial leadership from a collaborating minority-serving
institution. This
institute is partially funded by Intel. NSF AI Institute for
Learning-Enabled Optimization at Scale (TILOS). Led by the University of California San Diego, in collaboration with five other universities across the nation, this institute will aim to “make impossible optimizations possible” by addressing the fundamental challenges of scale and complexity. Learning-enabled optimization will be applied in several technical focus areas vital to the nation’s health and prosperity, including semiconductor chip design, robotics and networks. The research agenda is accompanied by plans for workforce development and broadening participation at all academic levels, from middle school to advanced research levels, including community outreach efforts to promote AI. This
institute is partially funded by Intel. NSF AI Institute for
Intelligent Cyberinfrastructure with Computational Learning in the Environment
(ICICLE). Led by The Ohio State University, this institute will build the next generation of cyberinfrastructure that will make AI easy for scientists to use and promote its further democratization. ICICLE will transform the AI landscape of today by bringing in scientists from multidisciplinary backgrounds to create a robust, trustworthy and transparent national cyberinfrastructure that is ready to “plug-and-play” in areas of societal importance, such as "smart foodsheds", precision agriculture and animal ecology. The institute will develop a new generation of the workforce, with sustained diversity and inclusion at all levels. NSF AI Institute for Future
Edge Networks and Distributed Intelligence (AI-EDGE). Led
by The Ohio State University, this institute will leverage the synergies
between networking and AI to design future generations of wireless edge
networks that are highly efficient, reliable, robust and secure. New AI tools
and techniques will be developed to ensure that these networks are self-healing
and self-optimized. Through collaboration, these networks will help
long-standing distributed AI challenges making AI more efficient, interactive,
and privacy preserving for applications in sectors such as intelligent
transportation, remote health care, distributed robotics and smart aerospace.
AI-EDGE will create a research, education, knowledge transfer and workforce
development environment that will help establish U.S. leadership in
next-generation edge networks and distributed AI for many decades to come. This
institute is partially funded by DHS. NSF AI Institute for Edge
Computing Leveraging Next-generation Networks (Athena). Led
by Duke University, this institute will focus on developing edge computing with
groundbreaking AI functionality while keeping complexity and costs under
control. Bringing together a world-class, multidisciplinary team of scientists,
engineers, statisticians, legal scholars and psychologists from seven
universities, Athena will transform the design, operation and service of future
systems from mobile devices to networks. Athena is committed to educating and
developing the workforce, cultivating a diverse next generation of edge
computing and network leaders whose core values are driven by ethics and
fairness in AI. As a nexus point for the community, Athena will spearhead
collaboration and knowledge transfer, translating emerging technical capabilities
to new business models and entrepreneurial opportunities. This
institute is partially funded by DHS. NSF AI Institute for Dynamic
Systems. Led
by the University of Washington, this institute will enable innovative research
and education in fundamental AI and machine learning theory, algorithms and
applications specifically for safe, real-time learning and control of complex
dynamic systems. The core motivation for this institute is to integrate
physics-based models with AI and machine learning approaches, leading the way
towards data-enabled ethical, efficient, and explainable solutions for
real-time sensing, prediction, and decision-making challenges across science
and engineering. This
institute is partially funded by DHS. NSF AI Institute for Engaged
Learning. Led
by North Carolina State University, this
institute will advance natural language processing, computer vision and machine
learning to build narrative-centered learning environments, embodied
conversational agents, and multimodal learning analytics to yield
transformative advances in STEM teaching and learning. This institute will
serve as a nexus for in-school and out-of-school STEM education innovation,
empowering and engaging diverse learners and stakeholders to ensure that
AI-driven learning environments are ethically designed to promote equity and
inclusion. This
institute is fully funded by NSF. NSF AI Institute for Adult
Learning and Online Education (ALOE). Led
by North Carolina State University, this institute will advance natural
language processing, computer vision and machine learning to engage learners in
AI-driven narrative-centered learning environments. Rich AI-driven virtual
agents and powerful multimodal sensing capabilities will support learners and
yield transformative advances in STEM teaching and learning. The institute will
serve as a nexus for in-school and out-of-school STEM education innovation,
empowering and engaging diverse learners and stakeholders to ensure that
AI-driven learning environments are ethically designed to promote equity and
inclusion. This
institute is partially funded by Accenture. NIFA invests in and advances agricultural research, education, and Extension across the nation to make transformative discoveries that solve societal challenges. NIFA supports initiatives that ensure the long-term viability of agriculture and applies an integrated approach to ensure that groundbreaking discoveries in agriculture-related sciences and technologies reach the people who can put them into practice. In FY2020, NIFA’s total investment was $1.95 billion. Visit
our website: www.nifa.usda.gov; Twitter: @USDA_NIFA; LinkedIn: USDA-NIFA. To learn more about NIFA’s impact on agricultural science (searchable by state or keyword), visit www.nifa.usda.gov/impacts.
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