Herbert G. Kayser Professor of Computer Science Zhigang Zhu, NSF AI-MI's co-principal investigator
Zhigang Zhu, the Herbert G. Kayser Professor of Computer Science in The City College of New York’s Grove School of Engineering, is a co-principal investigator for a new National Artificial Intelligence Materials Institute, which has been awarded a five-year, $20 million investment by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
NSF AI-MI, as it is known, will accelerate and transform the discovery of next-generation materials by integrating human scientific expertise with AI methods. Eun-Ah Kim, the Hans A. Bethe Professor of Physics at Cornell University, serves as principal investigator.
“Artificial intelligence is key to strengthening our workforce and boosting U.S. competitiveness,” said Brian Stone, who is performing the duties of the NSF director. “Through the National AI Research Institutes, we are turning cutting-edge ideas and research into real-world solutions and preparing Americans to lead in the technologies and jobs of the future.”
NSF AI-MI brings together computer scientists, materials researchers, and data scientists to tackle knowledge- and data-centric challenges to advance AI and materials science. The Institute will integrate data generation, AI analysis and rapid experimental feedback to reduce the time it takes to discover new materials from months to days, and to establish reproducible, reusable workflows for the broader research community.
To support this work, AI-MI plans to create the AI Materials Science Ecosystem, or AIMS-EC, an open, cloud-based portal that integrates a science-ready large language model with data from experiments, simulations, images and scientific literature.
“As a researcher in AI and computer vision for various applications, I would work with my student and the AI-MI team to implement the key algorithms in the integration of LLMs and computer vision for material designs, especially on AI applications for assistive human-machine interaction with advanced smart materials,” said Zhu. “As the Broader Impacts for Students Lead of AI-MI, my goal is to get our more talented students in computer science, data science and material sciences from CCNY and other institutions involved in the activities of this exciting cross-disciplinary AI Institute.”
Zhu directs the CUNY Computational Vision and Convergence Laboratory and co-directs CCNY’s master's degree program in data science and engineering. He is also on the faculty of the doctoral program in computer science and the M.S. program in cognitive neuroscience at the CUNY Graduate Center.
In addition to Cornell and CCNY, researchers from the Advanced Science Research Center at CUNY, Princeton University, and Boston University are involved in the effort.
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Syd Steinhardt
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ssteinhardt@ccny.cuny.edu