Purdue joins newly established NSF AI Institute
07-29-2021
The U.S. National Science Foundation announced the establishment of 11 new NSF National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes, building on the first round of seven institutes funded in 2020. The combined investment of $220 million expands the reach of these institutes to include a total of 37 states.
Purdue Computer Science is part of the NSF AI Institute for Future Edge Networks and Distributed Intelligence (AI-EDGE), a new federally funded institute dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence for networking research. AI-EDGE will leverage the synergies between networking and AI to design future generations of wireless edge networks that are highly efficient, reliable, robust and secure and facilitate solving long-standing distributed AI challenges.
Leading the efforts at Purdue Computer Science, Professor Elisa Bertino will be a co-principal investigator and faculty lead of Research Thrust 4 across the institute on AI-Powered Network Security.
“Future Edge Networks will be complex, dynamic and large-scale systems. Ensuring their security is a challenging problem which requires comprehensive innovative solutions,” said Bertino.
“The AI-EDGE Institute will leverage expertise from many areas of AI to design cutting-edge technologies and solutions.” Bertino added, “My students and I look forward to the collaborations enabled by AI-EDGE, expanding opportunities to broaden our interests and impact of the research.”
Associate Professor Chunyi Peng will lead Use Case 2 of human machine mobility in AI-EDGE. She explains the importance of the research, “Connecting machines and humans at various mobility scales, especially under extreme mobility, is a key enabler to future wireless networks including 5G and 6G+ systems.”
The AI Institute for Future Edge Networks and Distributed Intelligence (AI-EDGE) will receive a total of $20 million over five years. AI-EDGE is led by The Ohio State University and the funding is shared by core partner institutions, including Purdue University.
In addition to collaborating with Purdue University, The Ohio State University will work with Carnegie Mellon University, Northeastern University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Michigan, University of Texas-Austin, University of Washington, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign and University of Illinois-Chicago. Industrial partners, including AT&T, IBM, Microsoft and Qualcomm and the Air Force Research Lab, Army Research Lab and Naval Research Lab are also part of the project tasked with translating the research so that it is widely adopted.
Led by NSF, and in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Google, Amazon, Intel and Accenture, the National AI Research Institutes will act as connections in a broader nationwide network to pursue transformational advances in a range of economic sectors and science and engineering fields — from food system security to next-generation edge networks.
About Purdue University
Purdue University is a top public research institution developing practical solutions to today’s toughest challenges. Ranked the No. 5 Most Innovative University in the United States by U.S. News & World Report, Purdue delivers world-changing research and out-of-this-world discovery. Committed to hands-on and online, real-world learning, Purdue offers a transformative education to all. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue has frozen tuition and most fees at 2012-13 levels, enabling more students than ever to graduate debt-free. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap at https://purdue.edu/.
Writer: Emily Kinsell, emily@purdue.edu
Sources: Elisa Bertino, bertino@purdue.edu
Chunyi Peng, chunyi@purdue.edu