Everywhere you look at Washington State University - from labs to field stations to classrooms - artificial intelligence is being harnessed for the public good.
WSU scientists have developed new tools for analyzing images of cellular tissue for disease and studying the genes that drive cancer. They are building technologies that integrate AI into homes, smartphones - even clothing - to monitor health and activity. They are providing farmers with precision forecasts for weather and water supply, and designing robotics to bring in the harvest, as well as working to protect the region's energy grid and national security.
They are working alongside small-town teachers to adapt to AI in the K-12 classroom, and they are grappling with the opportunities and challenges that AI brings into teaching undergrads and graduate students.
The AI revolution is changing the world - a transformation as thoroughgoing as the arrival of the steam engine or the internet. And WSU is helping to shape that change.
"What it's allowed us to do is accelerate and amplify our land-grant mission by focusing on real-world needs and working with communities, organizations, and industries to break through with new inventions, with new solutions that provide better crops, better health care, better energy systems," said Kim Christen, WSU's vice president for research.
In the past five fiscal years, as WSU has doubled its computing capacity, the university attracted roughly $73 million in AI-related research investments. That funding represents research in the key areas within WSU's emerging research strength of AI/Machine Learning and Robotics: high-tech and precision agriculture; energy reliability and resilience, smart health systems; wearable devices and smart sensors; cybersecurity; and electronic design automation.
In addition, the Office of Research has created the Advancing AI Research Working Group led by Ananth Kalyanaraman, professor and director of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, to bring WSU researchers together to catalyze impactful research.
That lays the foundation for WSU to be a key player in a future defined by AI expansion. Major federal initiatives are under way to drive AI research, infrastructure and national security, including the Genesis Mission, a Department of Energy venture that aims to connect the computing systems, scientific datasets, and advanced scientific instruments of its 17 national laboratories - including the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which has a long-standing partnership with WSU - to create "the most complex and powerful scientific instrument ever built."
WSU and Washington state are primed to play important roles, given the concentration of research institutions and tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft. That makes the building of a statewide network of partnerships a priority moving forward.
"This is happening now," Christen said. "WSU and Washington state are a hot spot for AI research and development. We move national priorities forward, connect with the key industries, and provide the research as well as the training and workforce development to prepare future generations of scientists, engineers, and health workers."
'AI is everywhere'
WSU has been working to improve AI systems and develop real-world applications for many years - long before the topic exploded into the daily headlines and generative AI showed up as a routine presence on smartphones and search engines.
Diane Cook, a Regents Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science who has been working in the field for nearly two decades, recalls going to AI conferences years ago that drew little attendance or attention.
"I started in AI/machine learning when field was in its infancy," she said. "Most scientists, particularly those outside of computer science, considered it a thought exercise rather than a discipline that would yield practical value."
But the underlying algorithms that power these emerging technologies have been in place for many years. What's happened more recently has been a perfect storm of developments that make AI more accessible and practical.
"What has changed is every aspect that leads into AI," she said. "Data are much easier to access and larger in size and specificity. The ability for people to work together on these problems is much improved. And as soon as you are able to make a breakthrough, it snowballs and you can make a lot more breakthroughs."
Cook has developed smart home systems and other smart-sensing applications that can monitor health - tools with important ramifications for helping an aging population stay in their homes as long as possible and for addressing the costs of health care.
Jana Doppa, the Huie-Rogers Endowed Chair Professor of Computer Science in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, remembers arriving at WSU as a newly minted PhD more than a decade ago with a background in foundations of AI and a desire to establish a distinct research pathway.
He had a conversation with a computer engineering colleague, Partha Pande, who was interested in designing improved computer chips - they thought that the hardware design process could be significantly improved using AI.
"We wrote one of the first papers on how to use AI and machine learning to design better hardware," he said. "Since then, in more than 10 years, we have done a whole lot of work on how to use AI to design better hardware for various big data computing and AI applications resulting in more than 100 publications."
It turns out that the same AI research problems arising in hardware design are equally applicable to many other domains, including materials discovery and drug/vaccine design. This led to Doppa's overall research program on AI to accelerate engineering design and scientific discovery, for which he was awarded a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER grant.
Doppa's work spans many subareas of AI and application domains. Within the hardware domain, he applied AI to design efficient computing platforms at different scales, from wearables and smartphones to server and cloud systems.
"The same AI techniques can be used to design each of these different computing systems," he said. "And we have looked at the whole spectrum over the last 10 years."
Cook and Doppa are among many at WSU who have established long-term expertise in these emerging technologies - expertise they're harnessing to help people adapt and benefit as the world changes.
"AI is everywhere," Doppa said. "You have to think about it this way: AI is essentially on your team - AI brings something to the table that can make you more productive. It's essentially a team member on your project."
This story is part of an AI series looking at how WSU is driving innovation in research and teaching through artificial intelligence. View the entire series as it becomes available.
