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$3 million NSF grant will help create graduate certificate in AI and autonomy

by Sara Velasquez on November 1st, 2024 in OILS | 0 Comments

Written by: Carly Bowling

A brand new graduate certificate in artificial intelligence and autonomy is coming to The University of New Mexico with the help of a nearly $3 million National Science Foundation grant awarded to a School of Engineering professor.

Professor Meeko Oishi in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering received the prestigious NSF National Research Traineeship program award for her project titled “Reliable and Responsive AI for Autonomous Systems Engineering” (RAISE). Funding began Sept. 1 and will last five years. The research team includes co-PIs Stephanie Moore, associate professor of Organization, Information and Learning Sciences in the College of University Libraries and Learning Sciences; Melanie Moses, professor in the Department of Computer Science; Claus Danielson, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering; and Rafael Fierro, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Senior Personnel Fernando Moreu, Civil Engineering, Xin Chen, Computer Science, and Wenbin Wan, Mechanical Engineering.

The RAISE program will create a graduate certificate in the School of Engineering open to master’s and Ph.D. students at the University, as well as establish an annual cohort of graduate engineering fellows to be trained in the ethical development and use of AI for autonomous systems.

“There are pressing research challenges in using AI and machine learning responsibly.  These challenges are especially urgent when AI is employed in dynamical systems.  We are interested in developing theories, methods, and algorithms in AI for autonomous systems that can help provide assurances about reliability as well as responsiveness to the human in the loop,” Oishi said. “The research that we will be doing as part of the award will contribute cutting edge solutions to difficult but vitally important problems, and will have implications not only for robotics and autonomous vehicles, but for other dynamical systems, as well.”

The program will be organized around four primary areas. Research into space and defense autonomy may yield technology that allows satellites to operate on their own in space missions. Work on algorithmic fairness will explore the societal implications of machine learning algorithms and how to build notions of fairness into systems. Multi-agent and intelligent systems research will help advance technology that allows machines to communicate with each other and achieve joint objectives in novel and challenging environments. Research in extreme-scale computing will investigate how to get distributed systems with limited training resources to take on machine learning tasks successfully. 

Collaborations between UNM’s Organization, Information and Learning Sciences (OILS) and the Departments of Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering will help offer students a strong interdisciplinary education on the topics and enable the program to offer courses that stretch beyond mathematics and engineering. A critical piece of the curriculum is its focus on ethical decision making as part of the design process.

Associate Professor Moore’s work focuses on learning design, ethics and technology. She is co-designing the RAISE course sequence focused on ethics in the design of automated systems.

“Rather than teaching about philosophical approaches to ethics in isolation, we’re going to approach it from the perspective of ethical considerations as design specifications. You may not be able to optimize all the things. You have to make tradeoffs and so how do you navigate those tradeoffs as an engineering designer and what are the possible solutions that result from that,” Moore said.

Generative AI has been criticized for making up information and making biased decisions. Centering ethical decision-making will give the future AI workforce tools and experience to think through the potential impact of the technology they develop. The program’s focus on ethical decision making is representative of a larger trend in the engineering community.

“Engineering as a profession writ large has certainly become a lot more sensitive to ethics and considerate of how we can fold that into what we’re designing and developing and how those processes are implemented,” Moore said.

The OILS department brings a “unique domain of expertise” to the project with a focus on adult learners, use of technology, ethics of technology and other areas, Moore said. The collaboration with the School of Engineering will afford the project team the opportunity to explore social and psychological learning aspects, network and teamwork collaboration and other necessary elements of engineering projects.

News about the program quickly caught the attention of nearby labs and companies. Local industry jumped on the opportunity to get involved with the goal of eventually recruiting graduates for competitive roles that can be difficult to fill.

“AI is an area of rapid growth that is economically and strategically important for the US.  There is a clear need for development of a workforce that can create cutting-edge AI technologies and facilitate their translation into commercially viable technologies.  RAISE helps to address this challenge by creating a graduate level training program that provides students with the unique skills they need to succeed in this fast-changing, competitive space,” Oishi said.

RAISE Fellows will receive stipends, tuition, and benefits for their participation in RAISE. Every participant will have the opportunity to complete a research internship with one of several industry partners, including Sandia National Laboratories, the Air Force Research Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Northrop Grumman, Verus Engineering, Torc Robotics, Build with Robots, and Black Sky. 

The first student cohort will enroll in the program in Fall 2025.

In addition to the development of a graduate certificate, the RAISE program will host an annual field day, a seminar series, and several professional development activities for RAISE Fellows, including brown-bag luncheons for learning about career pathways, formal mentoring between fellows and industry partners, and workshops on technical writing, creating CVs and resumes, and other relevant topics.

Oishi’s NRT award is the third of its kind at UNM. Professor Thomas Turner in the Department of Biology received an NRT award in 2020 to develop a new graduate education model centered on UNM’s science museums. Last summer, Associate Professor Victor Acosta in the Department of Physics and Astronomy received an NRT award to address the need for cross-disciplinary graduate training in quantum photonics.

Top image: Faculty and staff involved in the RAISE Program posed for a group shot outside the Centennial Engineering Center. Back row from left to right: Wenbin Wan, Rafael Fierro and Xin Chen. Front row from left to right: Marisa DeLeon, Meeko Oishi and Stephanie Moore. Faculty involved who are not pictured include Melanie Moses, Claus Danielson, and Fernando Moreu.

 


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