Krishna Tapped as Deputy Director for $5.5 Million Department of Energy Artificial Intelligence Initiative

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) has given three institutions a $5.5 million grant to collectively find solutions to some of the most challenging problems in artificial intelligence (AI) today. Scientists from Georgia Tech, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratory will collaborate to develop technologies that are core to the DOE’s priorities including cybersecurity, graph analytics, and electric grid resilience.

Tushar Krishna, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Machine Learning Center (ML@GT), will serve as a deputy director of the newly established Center for Artificial Intelligence-focused Architectures and Algorithms (ARIAA).

Georgia Tech is contributing expertise in modeling and developing custom accelerators for machine learning and sparse linear algebra. The institute will also provide access to its advanced computing resources.

“Georgia Tech provides a great environment to carry out this research, because of vibrant research centers such as ML@GT and CRNCH that bring together researchers from algorithms, compilers, architecture, circuits, and novel devices fostering collaboration and innovation,” says Krishna.

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Centered around “co-design”, ARIAA is designed to help researchers strike the right balance between the capabilities of hardware and software. Finding the perfect balance allows researchers to corral the vastly different algorithms and architectures available that could best solve a given problem. While co-design is not new, the increasing popularity of AI has drawn it back into focus.

Another difficult challenge that continues to face researchers is how to best design supercomputers to that they are beneficial to the DOE in solving the nation’s most difficult problems in engineering, health, energy, and science. The project will aim to develop algorithms and architectures that can be applied to current and future systems. 

The grant announcement reinforces the DOE’s commitment to accelerating the development, delivery, research, and adoption of AI, and supports President Trump’s plans for a national strategy to design AI technologies that are developed to positively impact American lives.