NSF Awards $20M to USC and Collaborators to Renew AI Institute - USC Viterbi | School of Engineering

AI 4 Optimization (Credit: Dall-E)

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has renewed the Artificial Intelligence Institute for Advances in Optimization (AI4OPT) through 2031, awarding $20 million to support the institute’s next phase of research at the University of Southern California (USC), the University of California, Berkeley, and lead institution Georgia Tech.

Over the next five years, the renewed institute will continue its mission to fuse AI and Optimization to achieve breakthroughs that could not be delivered independently by the two technologies, and to realize their effectiveness in real-world applications at societal scale.

Building on its first five years of work, the institute’s second phase will focus on four integrated areas, or “thrusts”: two advancing the science of AI and optimization, and two applying those advances to energy systems, supply chains and manufacturing.

AI4OPT aims to bring foundational research closer to real-world applications by developing intelligent systems that can make complex decisions, account for uncertainty and coordinate at massive scales.