Georgia Tech secures $5m Google.org commitment to widen access to AI science

The three-year initiative will fund 15 research projects and train more than 300 researchers and faculty, focusing on institutions with historically limited access to advanced computing

Georgia Tech has received an initial $2.25 million toward Google.org’s $5 million commitment to expand access to AI tools, training and computing resources for scientific research.

Georgia Institute of Technology will develop shared AI research tools and support scientists across the United States through a $5 million commitment from Google.org, with $2.25 million already received for the program’s first year.

The initiative targets barriers that can prevent researchers from using AI: insufficient computing power, limited training and tools that work on one computing system but cannot easily transfer to another.

Over three years, Georgia Tech plans to develop at least 15 reusable AI tools and workflows, fund 15 research projects and provide technical support to approximately 30 additional research teams. Training will reach more than 300 researchers and faculty, covering applications in both research and teaching.

The program will focus on institutions that have historically had less access to powerful computing resources.

“AI has the potential to reshape how science is done, but that transformation should not be limited to a small number of researchers or institutions,” says Tim Lieuwen, Executive Vice President for Research at Georgia Tech.

Shared tools across different computing systems

Georgia Tech’s Institute for Data Engineering and Science, known as IDEaS, will lead the work alongside the Center for AI in Science and Engineering, a joint center of IDEaS and the College of Computing.

The initiative will build on Nexus, Georgia Tech’s new AI supercomputer funded by the National Science Foundation, and connect researchers with Google’s advanced AI computing technology.

The aim is to make AI tools easier to use across different computing systems and share between institutions. Researchers will be able to build on reusable tools and workflows rather than work solely within the systems available at their own institutions.

Google.org frames the investment as an effort to broaden access to the resources behind AI-assisted science.

“One of the biggest opportunities in AI isn’t just to make individual researchers faster. It’s to change the underlying economics of scientific discovery by making leading AI models and capabilities accessible to far more researchers and institutions,” says Sepi Hejazi Moghadam, Head of Foundations of Science at Google.org.

Research funding and training over three years

The program will fund five research projects each year, alongside technical assistance for the additional teams. Its training component will help researchers and faculty use AI in their scientific work and teaching.

By the end of the three-year initiative, Georgia Tech expects 25 to 30 institutions to be actively using the shared tools.