Faculty receive funding to develop artificial intelligence techniques to combat Covid-19
Artificial intelligence has the power to help put an end to the Covid-19 pandemic. Not only can techniques of machine learning and natural language processing be used to track and report Covid-19 infection rates, but other AI techniques can also be used to make smarter decisions about everything from when states should reopen to how vaccines are designed. Now, MIT researchers working on seven groundbreaking projects on Covid-19 will be funded to more rapidly develop and apply novel AI techniques to improve medical response and slow the pandemic spread.
Earlier this year, the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute (C3.ai DTI) formed, with the goal of attracting the world’s leading scientists to join in a coordinated and innovative effort to advance the digital transformation of businesses, governments, and society. The consortium is dedicated to accelerating advances in research and combining machine learning, artificial intelligence, internet of things, ethics, and public policy — for enhancing societal outcomes. MIT, under the auspices of the School of Engineering, joined the C3.ai DTI consortium, along with C3.ai, Microsoft Corporation, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of California at Berkeley, Princeton University, the University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon University, and, most recently, Stanford University.
The initial call for project proposals aimed to embrace the challenge of abating the spread of Covid-19 and advance the knowledge, science, and technologies for mitigating the impact of pandemics using AI. Out of a total of 200 research proposals, 26 projects were selected and awarded $5.4 million to continue AI research to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 in the areas of medicine, urban planning, and public policy.
The first round of grant recipients was recently announced , and among them are five projects led by MIT researchers from across the Institute: Saurabh Amin, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering; Dimitris Bertsimas, the Boeing Leaders for Global Operations Professor of Management; Munther Dahleh, the William A. Coolidge Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society; David Gifford, professor of biological engineering and of electrical engineering and computer science; and Asu Ozdaglar, the MathWorks Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and deputy dean of academics for MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.
“We are proud to be a part of this consortium, and to collaborate with peers across higher education, industry, and health care to collectively combat the current pandemic, and to mitigate risk associated with future pandemics,” says Anantha P. Chandrakasan, dean of the School of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and...
