Image: The IAI Spotlight on New Faculty was a tremendous success. Over 50 faculty, students, and staff came to participate in the three hour event. We heard from leaders in the AI industry at Insight Enterprises and NVIDIA, learned about the exciting research that our new fellows are working on, and finally broke out into small groups to focus on idea generation for the five AI convergence themes. Critical resources were identified across all themes, including our tremendous reach into different sectors of local and state government, institutional and federal research facilities such as research farms, as well as data and partnerships from AI fellow's research that can be the foundation of interdisciplinary collaborations. Groups also discussed grand challenges for AI research, including the integration and ethics of AI into government, how we approach AI-assisted assessment and research with transparency, and how we build trust with users of AI tools. Teams emerging from these collaborations now have the opportunity to compete for funding in the second round of IAI seed grants. Photos of the event can be found below: Steve Strickland (Insight Enterprises) kicks off the industry speakers session. New IAI Fellow Dr. Jie "Jennifer" Lu introduces her lab's research on AI-driven virtual patient simulations. Dr. Roberto Perdisci leads the AI for Cyber & Social Security convergence theme working group.
