Established in 2018, the Rensselaer-IBM Artificial Intelligence Research Collaboration (AIRC) was a multiyear, joint effort between Rensselaer and IBM that involved multiple graduate students, postdocs, research scientists, and faculty working closely with IBM researchers to push the frontiers of AI research and apply their results to some of the world’s key global challenges.

The AIRC was part of the AI Horizons Network, which brought together IBM researchers, world-class faculty, and top graduate students to collaborate on a series of advanced research projects and experiments designed to accelerate the application of artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, and related technologies.

AIRC projects were designed to apply the technologies to some of the world’s most enduring challenges, ranging from disease and the environment to transportation and education. This research addressed the entire AI stack, from analyzing the unstructured and structured data required to train these systems, developed new algorithms, and built the new computing infrastructures needed to optimize the new data-intensive workloads of a truly digital world.

As part of the Rensselaer-IBM Artificial Intelligence Research Collaboration (AIRC) agreement, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute sought to enhance its faculty ranks in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. In alignment with this goal, Rensselaer launched an initiative to recruit outstanding tenured/tenure-track faculty members with expertise in AI and machine learning. The focus was on expanding research in key areas such as cybersecurity, AI chip design, robotics, computer vision, IoT, and more. This effort aimed to build a research cluster that would not only advance the theory and practice of AI but also address global challenges across sectors like energy, climate science, life sciences, and advanced manufacturing.