Computer and Data Sciences Chair Vipin Chaudhary heads collaboration with Ohio State, Indiana and others to bring AI into daily life

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.

“Our leadership role in this grant demonstrates Case Western Reserve’s growing prominence as a leader in artificial intelligence research,” President Eric W. Kaler said. “I commend Professor Chaudhary for his efforts to ensure that AI can be applied more broadly to address global challenges.”

The researchers at Ohio State, Case Western Reserve and Indiana University will operate the AI Institute for Intelligent Cyberinfrastructure with Computational Learning in the Environment (ICICLE). They’ll partner with a dozen other universities to work toward building the next generation of cyberinfrastructure necessary to bring AI to more people, in this farmers and wildlife managers, especially.

“Our researchers at the Case School of Engineering have been making great strides in working toward bring valuable artificial intelligence applications and solutions from idea to reality,” said Venkataramanan “Ragu” Balakrishnan, the Charles H. Phipps Dean of the Case School of Engineering. “This new National Science Foundation support will further enhance and expand the work of those dedicated scientists as they collaborate with partners in academia and in other fields.”

$220 million AI investment

The new institute is one part of a larger, $220 million initiative to fund 11 institutes announced by the NSF today.

The ICICLE institute aims to help create “a national infrastructure that enables artificial intelligence at the flick of a switch,” the NSF said.

Chaudhary said the image illustrates the institute’s goal to bring the computing power of AI into the homes and businesses of more Americans, who will increasingly benefit from the technology in the same way they do from electricity or plumbing.

He said the time is right for expanding the application of AI into many different areas of daily life because of the foundational improvements that have been made in cyberinfrastructure (computer hardware and software) over the last decade.

“Those improvements have been pivotal in the far-reaching growth of AI and will continue to be so,” Chaudhary said. “AI has to work faster, transparently and easier for the non-AI experts to use effectively.”

Ensuring transparency of data will also be essential to ICICLE’s success, said Erman Ayday, an assistant professor in computer and data science at Case Western Reserve.

“In many emerging fields, privacy concerns become a barrier for data sharing and for rapid developments in research,” said Ayday, part of the project team. “Solutions provided by ICICLE will be fully transparent, and so users will have full control over their data when their data is collected, processed and shared.”

To learn more about the NSF AI Institutes and artificial intelligence research, go to nsf.gov.

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For more information, contact Mike Scott at mike.scott@case.edu.