National Science Foundation supports Hoda Eldardiry’s research to enhance AI ethics education

Hoda Eldardiry. Photo by Peter Means for Virginia Tech.

As artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly affects peoples’ everyday lives, Hoda Eldardiry, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and core faculty at the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics, is conducting research in engineering and computing education that will help students in majors such as computer science, computer engineering, and data science bridge the gap between the classroom and the job site.

Recently, she received a $349,360 grant from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Engineering Education program to support her work. 

“We want to ensure that every student is adequately prepared to not only confront but act on the challenges that new AI technologies pose to humans and society,” said Eldardiry. 

Read full story here.


Tiny tech, big impact: Miniaturized gas-analyzing tech boldly moves research forward

Graduate students (from left) Vikas Goel and Suman Dewanjee work on the aerosol impactor. Photo by Ben Murphy for Virginia Tech.

Since his introduction as a character in the 1960s science fiction show “Star Trek,” Spock has had a worldwide impact on pop culture.

Masoud Agah, director of the Virginia Alliance for Semiconductor Technology, hopes to make an equal impact with his own SPOCK: the first-ever “miniature” chromatograph.

Although it sounds like something out of “Star Trek,” a chromatograph is a tool that analyzes the chemical composition of materials, such as water, soil, drugs, food, pollutants, and in the case of Agah’s size-segregated particle odor chromatograph kernel, or SPOCK, gases and aerosols. 

“It’s the first of its kind, a truly miniaturized platform,” said Agah, who is also the Virginia Microelectronics Consortium Professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “There’s no equivalent with this size platform that also measures the chemical composition and physical properties of aerosols.”

As the director of a research group focused on machine learning and core faculty at the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data AnalysisHoda Eldardiry’s expertise in machine learning “on the edge” — an advancing field of research — helps make SPOCK possible.

Read full story here.


Amazon-Virginia Tech Initiative awards two student fellowships, five faculty research awards

(From left) Pedro Soto, postdoctoral associate, Department of Mathematics; Wenjie Xiong, assistant professor, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering; Muhammad Gulzar, assistant professor, Department of Computer Science; Xuan Wang, assistant professor, Department of Computer Science; Ruoxi Jia, assistant professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Dawei Zhou, assistant professor, Department of Computer Science; and Bo Ji, associate professor, Department of Computer Science. Virginia Tech photo

Two student Amazon Fellows and five faculty-led projects supported by the Amazon-Virginia Tech Initiative for Efficient and Robust Machine Learning for the 2024-25 academic year were named at a retreat held on the Blacksburg campus.

The initiative, launched in 2022 to advance research and innovation in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, is funded by Amazon, housed in the College of Engineering, and directed by researchers at the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics on Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg campus and at the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus in Alexandria. 

Fellowships are awarded to Virginia Tech doctoral students recognized for their scholarly achievements and potential for future accomplishments. They must be enrolled in their second, third, or fourth year and interested in and currently pursuing educational and research experiences in AI-focused fields. In addition to receiving funding for their work, the fellowship includes an opportunity to interview for an Amazon internship intended to provide them with a greater understanding of industry and use-inspired research.

The initiative’s faculty awards support machine learning sponsored research that works toward revolutionizing the way the world uses and understands this field of modern technology.

Read full story here.


Virginia Tech, Children’s National Hospital, and industry experts explore the impact of AI on health care

Rowland Illing, chief medical officer and director of international public sector health at Amazon Web Services, talked about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and the power of partnerships to solve challenges during an AI symposium at the Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus. Photo by Kenson Noel/Children’s National Hospital.

Thought leaders from academia and medical practice explored how artificial intelligence (AI) can advance children’s health care at the second annual Children’s National Hospital-Virginia Tech Symposium on AI for Pediatric Health at the Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus in Washington, D.C.

Rowland Illing, chief medical officer and director of international public sector health at Amazon Web Services (AWS), discussed the transformative impact of AI, machine learning, and cloud technology.

As a radiologist, Illing highlighted the example of how these tools enable clinicians to interpret screenings more quickly and accurately, addressing the growing global demand for faster diagnoses, better patient outcomes, and broader access to medical expertise.

He also highlighted the importance of collaboration to drive these advances.

Combined efforts between Virginia Tech and Children’s National are already yielding tangible results, said conference co-director Naren Ramakrishnan, director of the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics and the Thomas L. Phillips Professor in the Virginia Tech College of Engineering

Ramakrishnan emphasized the importance of expertise when integrating AI into pediatric health care.

Read full story here.


University Libraries receives grant to create Generative Artificial Intelligence Incubator Program

Yinlin Chen, assistant director for the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship in the University Libraries. Photo by Chase Parker for Virginia Tech.

University Libraries at Virginia Tech and the University of California, Riverside, received a $115,398 Institute of Museum and Library Services grant to create a generative artificial intelligence incubator program (GenAI) to increase the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in the library profession and academic libraries. 

The incubator program aims to train librarians in generative artificial intelligence skills to improve library services.

“Libraries should play a role in demystifying AI and guiding the public in its use,” said Yinlin Chen, assistant director for the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship in the University Libraries at Virginia Tech, who is the principal investigator and grant project director.

Chen will use his expertise in advanced GenAI techniques and multidisciplinary AI research in his collaboration with Edward Fox, co-principal investigator and director of the digital library research laboratory at Virginia Tech and computer science professor, and Zhiwu Xie, co-principal investigator and assistant university librarian for research and technology at the University of California, Riverside, to create the generative artificial intelligence incubator program. They will build training materials, workshops, and projects to assist librarians in becoming AI practitioners.

Fox is a core faculty member at the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics. Read full story here.


Washington Post, Virginia Tech collaborate on AI news search tool

Virginia Tech Ph.D. students (from left) Shailik Sarkar and Sha Li are working with Naren Ramakrishnan, director of the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics, on a project with The Washington Post. Photo by Craig Newcomb for Virginia Tech.

A recent trailer for the upcoming Francis Ford Coppola film “Megalopolis” made headlines, but not for the reasons it was supposed to.

Meant to bolster the director’s image as an iconoclast, the trailer quoted negative critic reviews of some of Coppola’s masterpieces, such as “Apocalypse Now” and “The Godfather,” from the time the films were released. There was just one problem — the quotes weren’t real. The marketing consultant responsible for sourcing them had, evidently, generated them using artificial intelligence (AI).

This is hardly the first high-profile case of this particular form of AI — a large language model (LLM) — inventing and misattributing information. We’ve seen lawyers file briefs citing cases that don’t exist. These fabrications, or hallucinations, can be quite authoritatively written in a way that may sound plausible enough for people to accept without thinking twice. So when it comes to the future of AI-driven search tools, accuracy is paramount. That’s why, when The Washington Post decided to create such a tool to help users better access its own archive, it enlisted Naren Ramakrishnan, director of the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics, based at the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus in Alexandria.

Read full story here.


AI projects move forward in collaboration between Virginia Tech, Children’s National Hospital

The momentum from last year’s Artificial Intelligence in Pediatric Medicine conference at the Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus continues in September as physicians and scientists from Children’s National Hospital and Virginia Tech review accomplishments and plan next steps. Officials at the 2023 conference included (from left) Virginia Tech Innovation Campus Vice President and Executive Director Lance Collins, Vice President for Health Sciences and Technology Michael Friedlander, Chief of Health Sciences Growth and Innovation Officer Sally Allain, and conference co-chairs Marius George Linguraru of Children’s National Hospital and Sanghani Center Director Naren Ramakrishnan. Photo by John Pastor for Virginia Tech.

Physician scientists and researchers from Children’s National Hospital and Virginia Tech will increase efforts to harness artificial intelligence (AI) to help children who are struggling with medical conditions.

The innovators will meet in September at the Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus in Washington, D.C.

“It’s clear that harnessing the power of artificial intelligence is the way forward in advancing children’s health,” said Lance Collins, vice president and executive director of the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus in Alexandria. “Virginia Tech researchers are building momentum and solidifying our collaborative goals in this important area.” 

The effort involves Virginia Tech’s Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics, Children’s National Hospital, and the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, which has labs at the Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus. 

This meeting builds on the momentum from last year’s workshop, which featured sessions on smart surgery, rare diseases, and emergency medicine with talks by both Virginia Tech and Children’s National faculty and researchers. 

Read full story here.


Building a COMPASS to navigate future pandemics

Computer science research team (from left) Nure Tasnina, T.M. Murali, Maryam Haghani, and Blessy Antony will help build predictive models based on machine learning to further research into pathogens that could jump species barriers and lead to infectious disease. Part of the COMPASS Center mission is to inspire doctoral students like Tasnina, Haghani, and Antony to pursue the field of pandemic science. Photo by Tonia Moxley for Virginia Tech.

Viruses like SARS-CoV-2 don’t respect boundaries, moving between species and continents and leaving destruction as they go. Beating the next pathogen with pandemic potential means getting good at crossing borders ourselves — between fields of study, between research universities, and between scientists and the wider community.

An $18 million grant announced by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) will put that goal within reach. The award brings together five universities and more than 20 researchers, academics, and public health experts to establish the Virginia Tech-led Center for Community Empowering Pandemic Prediction and Prevention from Atoms to Societies (COMPASS).

Among those on board are Naren Ramakrishnan, the Thomas L. Phillips Professor of Engineering and director of the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics, and Anuj Karpatne, associate professor of computer science and core faculty at the center. Read full story here.


Virginia Tech Innovation Campus’ first building nears completion

Virginia Tech Innovation Campus Academic Building One. Photo by Franki Fitterer for Virginia Tech.

The Innovation Campus Academic Building One (new home to the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics) set to open early next year, has cutting-edge features and is being built with technology befitting of a university committed to expanding the workforce in the areas of computer science and computer engineering. Read full story here.


CAREER award recipient to fight rare diseases using AI

Dawei Zhou. Photo by Peter Means for Virginia Tech.

While not a perfect system, human reasoning still outshines artificial intelligence (AI) in a number of critical areas. One Virginia Tech researcher wants to help change that.

Insufficient logical reasoning capability in AI can be a disadvantage when trying to tackle complex problems like diagnosing and treating rare diseases and detecting and disrupting financial fraud, said Dawei Zhou, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and a core faculty member at the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics.

Developing AI that can function more like human intelligence and learn from complicated real-world situations is the focus of his recently-announced National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award.

Read full story here.