4/2/2020 Allie Arp, CSL
Written by Allie Arp, CSL
The mission of C3.ai DTI is to bring together the world’s leading scientists in an innovative and coordinated effort to advance the digital transformation of society, business, and government. With COVID-19 being an urgent problem, the C3.ai DTI team will set its sights on using the power of artificial intelligence to answer such questions as what types of drugs are patients are best responding to, what is the best approach to get people back to work, and other important issues.
Also helping lead the way is CSL Professor Tandy Warnow, a member of Illinois’ Dept. of Computer Science and a chief scientist on the C3.ai DTI team.
“All of us are being impacted by COVID-19. It’s affecting how we live, work, and teach,” said Warnow, Founder Professor of Computer Science. “Dramatic advances in AI, machine learning, and IoT, will be necessary for improved analysis, diagnostic devices, and modeling.”
The application for proposals will open on April 6. While the deadline to apply is May 1, proposals submitted by April 15 will be able to receive approval and funding earlier than mid-“We want to encourage bold proposals,” said Srikant. “We want people to think outside of the box and bring us their best ideas.”
The new institute will be supported for the next five years by more than $57 million in cash contributions from C3.ai, in addition to more than $300 million in-kind donations from both C3.ai and Microsoft. More information about the institute can be found on its website.
The institute will be jointly administered by Illinois and the University of California, Berkeley. Shankar Sastry, Thomas M. Siebel Professor, and Costas Spanos, the Andrew S. Grive Professor, are the Co-Director and Co-Chief Scientist, respectively, of the institute at Berkeley. Projects submitted for proposal must be led by a research at one of the six founding institutions; Illinois, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, and the University of Chicago. Additional contributing members are Illinois alum Thomas Siebel’s company C3.ai, Microsoft, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.