UAlbany's Center for Emerging Artificial Intelligence Systems, which is a $20 million research partnership between IBM and the university, announced seven new research projects last week that are funded by the collaboration.
The AI center uses a cluster of IBM Spyre Accelerator chips installed at its data center on its uptown campus to speed up and enhance academic scientific research.
The AI center at UAlbany is unique in many ways. Not only was UAlbany selected by IBM to be the first place to host the new chips, but its campus is located across the street from Albany NanoTech, the high-tech campus where IBM is developing and testing its AI systems at what is known as the IBM Research AI Hardware Center.
IBM said at the time it would spend $2 billion over five years on the center. New York state contributed $300 million.
The IBM Research AI Hardware Center is where IBM has been developing its next-generation AI chips, including its Spyre chips that are plugged into IBM servers to optimize AI capabilities. The chips also reduce latency, or lag, making AI systems work nearly instantaneously, which is important, for instance, in tasks such as fraud protection at a bank. Each Spyre chip has 25.6 billion transistors made from 14 miles of wire.
The seven AI research projects being undertaken now by the joint IBM/UAlbany center all utilize the Spyre chips and aim to better integrate the power of AI into different types of research, each of which has unique challenges.
For instance, Xueying Yu, a research faculty member within UAlbany's Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, is working to use AI to improve the accuracy of methane emissions monitoring and integrate observations from satellite sensors.
S M Ashiqul Islam, an assistant professor in UAlbany's Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, is using AI to more quickly analyze cancer mutations and their patterns, helping scientists better understand how specific cancers develop, leading to more targeted treatments.
Another project looks at how to make wireless transmissions do two different tasks, such as detecting and sending data to a drone at the same time. That study is undertaken by Hany Elgala, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering.
The projects are not only scientific studies focusing on human problems like cancer and climate change, but also on how AI works and how it can be improved.
That's one of the things that makes the center so appealing, Eric Stern, co-director of the center, told the Times Union.
"We are thrilled to be working with IBM in this exciting area of AI research and development," Stern said. "Our faculty and students have the opportunity to access, work with, and contribute to refining emerging AI technology and at the same time use it to help to address societal challenges."
And other benefits come with the projects coming out of the center, especially since it gives UAlbany students networking and professional opportunities with IBM workers with whom they might not have previously worked. That could also open up new job opportunities located just across the street at Albany NanoTech. The facility is owned by NY Creates, a state-created nonprofit that oversees Albany NanoTech and other state high-tech and semiconductor assets.
"Both sides benefit from this cross-pollination and exposure to agile, outside-the-box thinking conducive to scientific and practical innovation," Stern said.
Stern said many UAlbany faculty want to work with the AI center and IBM, especially since the growth of AI is expected to create a new set of challenges that society will face, along with reaping the benefits.
"Many more UAlbany researchers are eager to work with IBM in this area than we can currently accommodate," Stern said. "This is partly because faculty are very aware of the economic, environmental, and critical infrastructure vulnerability costs associated with AI supercomputing and the data centers associated with it and the need to find ways of significantly reducing the energy consumption."
The school is an ideal test bed, says Mukesh Khare, general manager of IBM Semiconductors and vice president of hybrid cloud research at IBM. Each project has a UAlbany researcher paired with an IBM scientist. The first five projects were launched in 2024 before the additional seven were announced this week.
"Now, with the next generation of IBM Spyre Accelerators installed at UAlbany, it's exciting to see how researchers will leverage AI to advance research in medicine, climate science and so many other important areas," Khare said.
UAlbany and IBM jointly formed the $20 million Center for Emerging AI Systems in 2023 to create a testbed for projects using the latest IBM hardware designed to support AI computing with greater speed and energy efficiency through lower-precision calculations.
Each project teams a UAlbany researcher with a colleague from IBM. The first five projects launched in 2024.
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