University of Memphis Partners with Institutions across Tennessee to support AI Research

The AI across Tennessee 2024 Symposium held to support adding state-wide infrastructure for AI research

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) Office of Research, Innovation and Economic Development (ORIED) and the UTK Office of Innovative Technologies (OIT) in partnership with the Tennessee Tech’s Machine Intelligence and Data Science Center, hosted the 2024 Artificial Intelligence Across Tennessee Symposium on July 18th. The Symposium included presentations and roundtable discussions about AI research across the state of Tennessee with the goal of informing a team investigating the activities to be enabled, the need, and the specification of an AI resource available for use by the researchers of the public universities across the state. The symposium also included a panel discussion on which Dr. Vinhthuy Phan, associate chair, associate professor, and Undergraduate Coordinator in the Department of Computer Science, participated.

Dr. Brian Evans, assistant director of Strategic Research Initiatives, and Dr. Srikar Velichety, assistant professor in the Department of Management Information Systems, presented on current AI research and resources at the University of Memphis. Eric Spangler of the High-Performance Computing group at the University also participated in the event. Presentations from partnering institutions including the UT system schools, East Tennessee State University, Middle Tennessee State University, Tennessee Tech, and Austin Peay State University highlighted current research endeavors and opportunities for collaborations around future work. Evans is serving as a co-principal investigator on a collaborative NSF Major Research Instrumentation grant proposal to obtain a $4 million GPU resource to support AI research across the state of Tennessee. This initiative coincides with the recent commencement of training at Elon Musk’s xAI supercomputer facility in Memphis.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about the AI across TN initiative, please reach out to Evans at bevans8@memphis.edu.