By Kitta MacPherson, Office of Rutgers University Communications

Rutgers University-New Brunswick leaders have made an initial investment of $10 million to advance the university’s capabilities and expand the scope of its research and scholarship on artificial intelligence and data science, with the expectation of producing the sorts of groundbreaking insights and practical solutions that will mark it as an innovator in the revolutionary technologies.

Implementation of the multipronged program, the product of more than a year of strategic planning, will involve establishing a research collaboratory, soliciting ideas for proposals of interdisciplinary research projects through a campuswide call, creating two new AI- and data science-centric student research programs and nurturing new partnerships with governmental agencies and industry leaders.

At the center of this vision will be the Rutgers Artificial Intelligence and Data Science (RAD) Collaboratory, an initiative that will serve as a virtual hub where university researchers and students will converge and lead efforts to make discoveries and devise practical applications. In a collaboratory – the word is a portmanteau of “collaboration” and “laboratory” – researchers work together to explore new ideas and solve problems.

“The RAD Collaboratory emerged from Rutgers-New Brunswick’s Academic Master Plan as a new path forward for collaboration across disciplines, including with the public and private sectors,” Rutgers-New Brunswick Chancellor Francine Conway said. “Faculty, students and outside partners will dive into the rapidly expanding worlds of AI and data science and forge new discoveries and applications to advance our society.”

A mission for the RAD Collaboratory will be to foster AI and data science research that will help Rutgers compete for federal and state funding while also partnering with industry leaders.

A mission for the RAD Collaboratory will be to foster AI and data science research that will help Rutgers compete for federal and state funding while also partnering with industry leaders.

“Through the integration of intellectual communities both within Rutgers and externally, the RAD Collaboratory will be strategically positioned to attract significant interdisciplinary large-scale funding opportunities,” said Denise Hien, senior vice provost for research and one of the plan’s architects. “These collaborations are expected to drive advancements in research and innovation, creating opportunities for joint projects, shared resources and impactful contributions to the field.”

Hien noted the invaluable support of the deans and research deans from the Schools of Engineering, Arts and Sciences, Communication and Information, and Environmental and Biological Sciences to develop the collaboratory and commended them for applying their powers of creativity and perception into their partnership.

The collaboratory will function as a center of research, but it also will serve as a hub, creating opportunities for all faculty members, students and staff to come together and learn about AI and data science. Saundra Tomlinson-Clarke, Rutgers–New Brunswick’s Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, is leading an initiative involving administrative and faculty leaders to devise optimal approaches to incorporate AI in the classroom. The Rutgers-New Brunswick Institute for Teaching, Innovation & Inclusive Pedagogy (TIIP) will play a strategic role in this effort, she said. She and members of her office are already in discussions with the New Brunswick Faculty Council to co-sponsor a conference later this year focused on innovative teaching approaches.

“This initiative represents a significant advancement in our efforts to integrate AI and data science into our academic framework and foster innovation across the university,” Tomlinson-Clarke said.

Stephen K. Burley, Henry Rutgers Chair and University Professor in the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, will be the interim director of RAD.

“Combining data science with AI has already begun to pay dividends across the biological and medical sciences,” said Burley, a structural biologist, physician and data scientist who currently directs the Institute for Quantitative Biomedicine. “This new collaboratory will make it easier, and more fun, for our community of scholars to capitalize on the expertise represented across the university, and the enormous wealth of digital data stored at Rutgers, running the gamut from agriculture to zoology.”

Areas of inquiry in RAD will include projects at the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics Protein Data Bank, the Rutgers-based U.S. data center of the Worldwide Protein Data Bank led by Burley that manages a global archive of atomic-level 3D structure data for proteins, DNA, RNA, viruses and macromolecular machines.

The Office of the Chancellor has allocated $10 million to the effort. The Office of the President is committing additional funding from the Roadmaps for Collective Academic Excellence program, a five-year initiative created by the Office of the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs.

Planning for the RAD initiative began in fall 2023, when Hien formed the Provost Strategic Task Force on Cyberinfrastructure and Data Science — composed of faculty from 11 campus schools and centers — with the charge of reimagining the directions of AI and data science at Rutgers. She appointed two co-chairs to lead the effort: Mark Aakhus, the associate dean for research and a professor in the School of Communication and Information, and James Barr von Oehsen, the previous associate vice president of the Office of Advanced Research Computing.

"The task force proposed a way to advance the conditions for successful research with scholarly and societal impact at Rutgers University-New Brunswick that is essential to addressing the hype around AI while discovering its legitimate uses," Aakhus said.

Scientists working to advance AI will have opportunities to make discoveries across the arts and the social, natural, physical, mathematical and medical sciences, said Dimitris Metaxas, a Distinguished Professor and a pioneer in computer vision, a type of AI that uses machine learning to analyze images and videos.

"The task force proposed a way to advance the conditions for successful research with scholarly and societal impact at Rutgers University-New Brunswick that is essential to addressing the hype around AI while discovering its legitimate uses," Aakhus said.

“This initiative is what we need to propel Rutgers to the forefront of AI and be involved in its future evolution,” said Metaxas, who directs the Center for Computational Biomedicine Imaging and Modeling. “It is very exciting to see that we will be investing in AI as a multidisciplinary endeavor. We’re going to need multiple perspectives, since AI is currently evolving beyond a purely data-driven approach and closer to a human-centered direction.”

Later this academic year, the Office of the Vice Provost for Research will issue an “Artificial Intelligence Grand Challenge Call,” inviting all faculty members to submit proposals for consideration as research areas within the collaboratory. 

Crucial to the RAD program will be two new Platforms for Education and Research Cores (PERCs) that will ensure students’ active participation in AI and data science research. The PERCs initiative, announced in September, is designed to open doors to core facilities for participants who can earn academic credits and certifications.

Those participating in the Scarlet Vision DataWorkshop PERC will learn that effective data visualizations can advance both scientific and artistic disciplines. 

“It will allow Rutgers faculty and students to examine tough societal challenges from many different perspectives, narrate stories supported with real data and unite the university as a community of innovation,” said Wade Trappe, Associate Dean for Research in the School of Engineering.

Others joining the Design Justice Labs PERC, part of the Critical AI initiative, will learn how to use AI tools the way that researchers do, assessing their functions and limitations. 

“At Rutgers, we recognize that the generative AI tools now fueling the intense interest and investment in computational technologies cannot succeed if they do not serve public needs and interests,” said Lauren Goodlad, a Distinguished Professor in the School of Arts and Sciences Department of English. She will lead the PERC along with Matthew Stone, a professor in the School of Arts and Sciences Department of Computer Science.

The RAD Collaboratory will house research efforts by the Rutgers Cyberinfrastructure and AI for Science and Society (RU CASS), focused on developing technologies that incorporate AI approaches. Under the aegis of the collaboratory, university leaders will expand the number of faculty with expertise in AI and data science through the newly named Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Cluster Hire.

The Office of Advanced Research Computing and the Office of Information Technology will play crucial roles in the university’s efforts in AI, including overseeing important investments in cyberinfrastructure.

An internal search for a permanent faculty director of the collaboratory will begin in the fall of 2025.

Learn more about the Research program and the Communication Department at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information on the website. 

This article was originally posted on Rutgers Today on October 16, 2024. 

Photo: Courtesy of Rutgers Today