Varun Chandola, Program Manager at National Science Foundation, will present a Penn State AI Distinguished Talk, "Towards a Robust Artificial Intelligence Innovation Ecosystem." This event is part of the Penn State AI Hub Talks series, organized by the Penn State AI Hub.

Towards a Robust Artificial Intelligence Innovation Ecosystem

Presented by Varun Chandola, Program Manager at National Science Foundation

NSF’s Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) seeks to foster the advanced cyberinfrastructure that is critical to the advancement of all areas of science and engineering research and education. This talk will present an overview of OAC and its programs and investments, especially in the areas of trustworthy, reusable and sustainable community software for science and engineering; robust and reusable data tools to aid all research communities in their management and use of digital information and for learning and workforce development to enable the productive use, sustainable maintenance, and effective governance of the computing systems. In particular, I will discuss the roadmap for OAC and NSF in general in realizing the infrastructure needed to support the next generation Artificial Intelligence (AI) research. I will also provide an overview of the NSF National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Institutes program that has resulted in 18 (and counting) institutes across the country to conduct foundational and use-inspired research focused on broad societal challenges and providing national competitiveness in AI.