Virginia Tech faculty receive National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Pilot awards – Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics

Anuj Karpatne (at right) speaks at the White House on May 6 during an event hosted by the Office of Science and Technology Policy announcing the launch of the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Pilot program. Photo courtesy of the National Science Foundation.

Anuj Karpatne’s project “Lake-GPT: Building a Foundation Model for Aquatic Sciences” is one of the first 35 to be supported with computational time through the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot program, marking a significant milestone in connecting U.S. researchers and educators to computational, data, and training resources needed to advance artificial intelligence (AI).

The NAIRR Pilot awards – a joint effort led by the National Science Foundation in collaboration with other U.S. federal agencies – are a result of President Joe Biden’s landmark Executive Order on the Safe, Secure and Trustworthy Development and Use of AI and provide researchers and students access to key AI resources and data.

Karpatne, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and core faculty at the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics, was among 10 award recipients invited to speak at a White House event hosted by the Office of Science and Technology Policy on Opportunities at the AI Research Frontier on May 6 announcing the launch of the NAIRR Pilot program. Karpatne also was one of two recipients invited to give longer talks on their NAIRR projects at the AI Expo for National Competitiveness in Washington, D.C., hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project.

A second group of NAIRR Pilot awards, announced in late May, include Debswapna Bhattacharya, associate professor of computer science, and Xuan Wang, assistant professor of computer science and core faculty at the Sanghani Center.

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