AI Institutes Virtual Organization

Optimization for ML and AI Seminar: High-dimensional Optimization with Applications to Compute-Optimal Neural Scaling Laws
2025-10-24 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | UC San Diego and Virtual, 9500 Gilman Dr, La Jolla, CA, 92093, United States

TILOS Seminar: AI Safety Theory: The Missing Middle Ground
2025-11-12 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Halicioglu Data Science Institute Room 123, 3234 Matthews Ln, La Jolla, CA, 92093, United States

NSF AI-SDM and Navajo Technical University: Forum on Artificial Intelligence: AI Education and Community
2025-11-14 09:00 - 13:00 (America/Denver) | Navajo Technical University, Lowerpoint Rd State Hwy 371, Crownpoint, NM, 87313, United States
Codesign a future where AI serves community resilience
Join the NSF AI Institute for Societal Decision Making (NSF AI-SDM) and Navajo Technical University (NTU) on November 14, 9:00 am –1:00 pm MST, for an inspiring program that will give you the tools to understand AI and use, evaluate, and direct these new technologies toward your local needs and community growth.
You’ll hear about initiatives from NTU faculty, staff, and students supported by AI-SDM and their research into key AI applications in the community, including drones, language and cultural preservation, and entrepreneurship.
Register now!
NSF AI-SDM & NTU “Forum on Artificial Intelligence: AI Education and Community”

November 14, 2025
9:00 am –1:00 pm, MST
Hospitality Center at Navajo Technical University
Lowerpoint Rd State Hwy 371, Crownpoint, NM 87313

Zoom
Registration

TILOS Seminar: Certifiably Correct Machine Perception
2025-11-19 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | SDSU and Virtual
Zoom: https://SDSU.zoom.us/j/84993405398

Calls for papers-AUG 22--Foundation Models for the Brain and Body NeurIPS 2025 Workshop
2025-12-02 - 2025-12-07 | San Diego Convention Center, 111 Harbor Dr., San Diego, 92101, United States
ARNI is proud to co-organize and sponsor the “Foundation Models for the Brain and Body” NeurIPS 2025 Workshop, alongside Meta and Sophont. This interdisciplinary workshop explores the emerging intersection of large-scale AI models and biosignals—such as EEG, EMG, MEG, and ECG—collected through brain-computer interfaces and wearable technologies. As these rich biological signals become more widely available, foundation models offer a powerful framework for decoding and generalizing across diverse real-world applications. The workshop will bring together researchers from neuroscience, biomedicine, wearable tech, and machine learning to tackle the unique challenges of biosignal data and shape the future of foundation models for brain and body. Calls for papers, demos, and travel awards are now open and due by August 22.

TILOS Seminar: 95 Percent: Bridging the Gap Between Prototype and Product
2025-12-03 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Zoom: https://SDSU.zoom.us/j/82711917109

Optimization for ML & AI Seminar: Training Neural Networks at Any Scale
2025-12-03 13:00 - 14:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Zoom: https://bit.ly/Opt-AI-ML

Networking Lunch Reception at NeurIPS 2025
2025-12-04 12:00 - 14:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Mezé Greek Fusion, 345 Sixth Ave, San Diego, CA, 92093, United States
Hosted by the NSF AI Institute TILOS, this event is open to industry partners and NeurIPS attendees affiliated with any of the NSF National AI Research Institutes.
Join us to connect with colleagues across the network of NSF AI Institutes, share research interests, and explore opportunities for collaboration.
Space is limited. Register here by Monday, November 24, 2025.

Optimization for ML and AI Seminar: Stochastic-Gradient and Diagonal-Scaling Algorithms for Constrained Optimization and Learning
2025-12-05 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles)

Call for Papers | UrbanAI: Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for Smart Cities Workshop (NeurIPS 2025)
2025-12-07 | San Diego Convention Center, 111 Harbor Dr., San Diego, 92101, United States
Announcing an AI Institute in Dynamic Systems Workshop:
UrbanAI: Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for Smart Cities at NeurIPS 2025
Urban areas generate over 70% of global carbon emissions and energy use, yet remain inefficient despite technological advances. Our workshop invites the ML community to tackle the complex challenges of urban optimization—spanning energy, transportation, public health, and more—through interdisciplinary collaboration and cutting-edge methods, with the goal of enabling scalable, real-world solutions for sustainable and resilient cities.
Key Dates

Submission Deadline: September 1 (AoE)
Decision Deadline: September 22 (AoE)
Workshop Date: December 7

More about our workshops: https://dynamicsai.org/workshops/
More about the NeurIPS 2025 conference: https://neurips.cc/

TILOS Seminar: Incentivizing Emergent Behaviors for LLMs via Reinforcement Learning
2025-12-08 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Zoom: https://bit.ly/TILOS-Seminars

Optimization for ML and AI Seminar: Randomized linear algebra with subspace injections
2026-01-09 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Halicioglu Data Science Institute Room 123, 3234 Matthews Ln, La Jolla, CA, 92093, United States

TILOS Seminar: Safety, Representations, and Generative Learning in Dynamical Systems
2026-01-28 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Halicioglu Data Science Institute Room 123, 3234 Matthews Ln, La Jolla, CA, 92093, United States

Optimization for ML and AI Seminar: Fantastic Pretraining Optimizers and Where to Find Them
2026-01-30 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Halicioglu Data Science Institute Room 123, 3234 Matthews Ln, La Jolla, CA, 92093, United States

Optimization for ML and AI Seminar: Extended Convex Lifting for Policy Optimization in Control
2026-02-06 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Halicioglu Data Science Institute Room 123, 3234 Matthews Ln, La Jolla, CA, 92093, United States
Speaker: Yang Zheng, UC San Diego
Abstract: Direct policy search has achieved great empirical success in reinforcement learning. Many recent studies have revisited its theoretical foundation for continuous control, which reveals elegant nonconvex geometry in various benchmark problems. In this talk, we introduce an Extended Convex Lifting (ECL) framework, which reveals hidden convexity in classical optimal and robust control problems from a modern optimization perspective. Our ECL offers a bridge between nonconvex policy optimization and convex reformulations. Despite non-convexity and non-smoothness, the existence of an ECL not only reveals that minimizing the original function is equivalent to a convex problem, but also certifies a class of first-order non-degenerate stationary points to be globally optimal. This ECL framework encompasses many benchmark control problems, including LQR, LQG, state-feedback, and output-feedback H-infinity robust control. We believe that the ECL framework may be of independent interest for analyzing nonconvex problems beyond control.
Bio: Yang Zheng is an Assistant Professor in the ECE Department at UC San Diego. His research focuses on control theory, convex and nonconvex optimization, and their applications to autonomous vehicles and traffic systems. He received his DPhil (Ph.D.) in Engineering Science from the University of Oxford in 2019, and his B.E. and M.S. degrees from Tsinghua University in 2013 and 2015, respectively. His work has been recognized with several awards, including the 2019 European Ph.D. Award on Control for Complex and Heterogeneous Systems, the 2022 Best Paper Award from IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems, the 2023 Best Graduate Teacher Award from UC San Diego’s ECE Department, the 2024 NSF CAREER Award, and the 2025 Donald P. Eckman Award from the American Automatic Control Council.
Zoom: https://bit.ly/Opt-AI-ML

TILOS-MICS Seminar: AI-Driven Design Automation for Multi-Chip Integration in AI Chips
2026-02-09 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Halicioglu Data Science Institute Room 123, 3234 Matthews Ln, La Jolla, CA, 92093, United States
Speaker: Sung-Kyu Lim, University of Southern California
Abstract: Multi-chip integration has become a standard approach in AI training and is rapidly gaining traction in edge learning applications. Leveraging 2.5D and 3D IC architecture enables substantial improvements in energy efficiency and latency by optimizing inter chip data transfer. At the core of this transformation lies the automation of design and simulation for heterogeneous AI chips, shifting from manual engineering to algorithm driven methodologies. This evolution is being accelerated by advanced electronic design automation (EDA) tools powered by AI. My research group develops novel AI driven algorithms that enhance or replace traditional design automation techniques, with a focus on enabling next generation heterogeneous AI systems. In this talk, I will present our recent innovations and explore the critical challenges that lie ahead in applying AI algorithms to EDA for high performance AI chip design.
Bio: Dr. Sung Kyu Lim is Dean’s Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Southern California, joining in Fall 2025 after over two decades at Georgia Tech. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Computer Science from UCLA. His research focuses on the architecture, design, and electronic design automation (EDA) of 2.5D and 3D integrated circuits, with over 450 publications. Dr. Lim is an IEEE Fellow and recipient of major awards including multiple Best Paper Awards (DAC 2023, TCAD 2022), and several Georgia Tech teaching honors. From 2022 to 2024, he served as a Program Manager at DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office.
Zoom: https://bit.ly/TILOS-Seminars

ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours
2026-02-10 15:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | Zoom webinar
Get answers to your questions related to proposal submission, active NAIRR Pilot awards, ACCESS MATCH submissions, and ACCESS resource usage and support during ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours.
SCIPE Cyberinfrastructure Professionals (CIPs) and representatives from NSF’s ACCESS program host Office Hours, and members of the NAIRR Pilot operations teams and Pilot partners regularly attend.
Please provide a detailed description of your issue or help request at the time of registration to give them an opportunity to prepare for your consultation. If your issue isn’t resolved during Office Hours, SCIPE CIPs or ACCESS staff will connect you with the appropriate Resource Provider team.
February 10, 2026
3:00-4:00 PM EST
Registration
Learn more about ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours

TILOS Seminar: Kinetic Theory Perspective of Foundation Models for Physics
2026-02-11 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Halicioglu Data Science Institute Room 123, 3234 Matthews Ln, La Jolla, CA, 92093, United States
Speaker: Maarten de Hoop, Rice University
Abstract: We present a kinetic theory perspective of foundation models for physics. We begin with providing a mathematical framework for analyzing transformers. To uniformly address their expressivity, we consider the case that the mappings are conditioned on a context represented by a probability distribution of tokens. That is, transformers become mappings between probability measures. The relevant notion of smoothness then corresponds to continuity in terms of the Wasserstein distance between such contexts. We demonstrate that deep transformers are universal and can approximate continuous in-context mappings to arbitrary precision, uniformly over compact token domains. We then characterize the conditions on mappings between measures that enable these to be represented in terms of in-context mappings as transformers. The solution map of the Vlasov equation, which is of nonlocal transport type, for interacting particle systems in the mean-field regime for the Cauchy problem satisfies the conditions; conversely, we prove that the measure-theoretic self-attention has the properties that ensure that the infinite depth, mean-field transformer can be identified with a Vlasov flow. Extending this framework from interactions to collisions leads to a further development of structured architectures inspired by Lattice Boltzmann Models, while flow motivates a design based on self-warping.
Bio: Professor Maarten V. de Hoop, Simons Chair in Computational and Applied Mathematics and Earth Science at Rice University, is internationally recognized for his contributions to the mathematical foundations of seismology, wave propagation, and inverse problems. His research bridges microlocal and harmonic analysis, scattering theory, and structured numerical methods with applications to seismic imaging, geophysical inversion, and large-scale computational modeling of acoustic, elastic, and electromagnetic phenomena. De Hoop has been a pioneer in developing techniques to extract subtle information from massive, complex seismic datasets, advancing our ability to probe the Earth’s interior with unprecedented resolution, and more recently has integrated deep learning and data-driven discovery with rigorous mathematical frameworks to open new frontiers in the analysis of multiscale wave phenomena and inverse spectral problems. He is the recipient of the J. Clarence Karcher Award from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists and the Young Scientists Award from the International Society for Analysis, its Applications and Computation, has been elected a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and an External Member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, and has served as associate editor for Inverse Problems, Inverse Problems and Imaging, and the International Journal on Geomathematics.
Zoom: https://bit.ly/TILOS-Seminars

ICICLE: Food Supply Networks and AI - A Four Part Webinar Series * WEBINAR I *
2026-02-20 09:00 - 10:30 (America/Chicago)
Direct Link: https://cias.wisc.edu/news/food-supply-networks-and-ai-a-four-webinar-series/

Webinar 1:”Digitalization of Agrifood Supply Chains, and the Impact on Social Sustainability and Fair Value Redistribution” with Dr. Marco Formentini, University of Trento

Friday, February 20, 2026
9AM-10:30AM Central Time
Zoom link: https://uwmadison.zoom.us/meeting/register/aCJTT74nRGy9ZFkS8VjZZw

Abstract: Dr. Formentini investigates sustainable supply chain management with a specific focus on agri-food supply chains. He will present on incorporating the theme of sustainability, fair value redistribution and collaborative negotiation in a digital environment. Issues of food loss and waste are important aspects of his work as is the importance of information sharing.
Bio: Prof. Formentini is the deputy director of the Executive MBA in Trento. He holds degrees in Management Engineering (University of Udine, Italy) and a Doctoral Degree (PhD) in Management Engineering (University of Padova, Italy). He has been Associate Professor at Audencia Business School, Nantes (France), Lecturer at the School of Management, University of Bath (UK) and Post-Doc Research Fellow at Cass Business School, City University London (UK) (now Bayes Business School).He has published in leading journals such as Journal of Product Innovation Management, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, European Journal of Operational Research, International Journal of Production Economics, International Journal of Production Research, Transportation Research: Part E, Journal of Cleaner Production, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, SCM: an International Journal, International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management and many others.

TILOS Seminar: Neuromorphic LLMs
2026-02-20 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Halicioglu Data Science Institute Room 123, 3234 Matthews Ln, La Jolla, CA, 92093, United States
Speaker: Jason Eshraghian, UC Santa Cruz
Abstract: This talk will show you what neuromorphic computing can do when an academic lab accidentally pulls $2-million of GPU-hours. We will showcase a series of frontier reasoning LLMs developed out of an academic lab, from data curation and pre-training to post-training and alignment. These models surpass leading LLMs from Meta, Google, and other heavily-resourced labs in the ~10-billion parameter regime, despite being 5x smaller.
We have deployed several models on neuromorphic hardware at just 2 watts, bringing state-of-the-art reasoning from the datacenter to the edge. Along the way, we dispel a series of widely-held assumptions about large-scale neuromorphic computation, revealing how it fundamentally differs from conventional deep learning, and why that difference matters.
Bio: Jason Eshraghian is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz. He received the Bachelor of Engineering and the Bachelor of Laws degrees from The University of Western Australia, where he also obtained his Ph.D. degree. He currently serves as the secretary-elect of the IEEE Neural Systems and Applications Technical Committee and is a consultant to several medical-tech startups. Dr. Eshraghian was awarded the 2019 IEEE VLSI Systems Best Paper Award, the 2019 IEEE AICAS Best Paper Award, and the Best Live Demonstration Award at the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits, and Systems. He is a recipient of the Fulbright, Endeavour, and Forrest Research Fellowships. His current research focuses on brain-inspired circuit design to accelerate AI algorithms and spiking neural networks.
Zoom: https://bit.ly/TILOS-Seminars

ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours
2026-02-25 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Zoom webinar
Get answers to your questions related to proposal submission, active NAIRR Pilot awards, ACCESS MATCH submissions, and ACCESS resource usage and support during ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours.
SCIPE Cyberinfrastructure Professionals (CIPs) and representatives from NSF’s ACCESS program host Office Hours, and members of the NAIRR Pilot operations teams and Pilot partners regularly attend.
Please provide a detailed description of your issue or help request at the time of registration to give them an opportunity to prepare for your consultation. If your issue isn’t resolved during Office Hours, SCIPE CIPs or ACCESS staff will connect you with the appropriate Resource Provider team.
February 25, 2026
12:00-1:00 PM EST
Registration
Learn more about ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours

ICICLE Webinar : AI in Agriculture
2026-02-27 11:30 - 12:30 (America/New_York)
AI in Agriculture

Friday, February 27, 2026
11:30 – 12:30 PM Eastern Time

Register here
Abstract: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming modern agriculture by enabling scalable, data-driven decision-making across the production chain. In this webinar, we showcase how the NSF funded ICICLE AI Institute’s Data-to-Action (DTA) pipeline supports the development and deployment of intelligent, modular applications for agricultural systems. The session explores end-to-end workflows integrating data ingestion, model training, inference, and interactive decision support through the following demonstrations.

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) chatbot, an AI agent designed to assist researchers and extension professionals by querying agricultural datasets and ICICLE resources using natural language.
Object detection and classification pipelines, highlighting real-time vision models for identifying crop health conditions and field objects.
Precision spot-spraying application that leverages deep learning for site-specific weed management.

Together, these use cases illustrate ICICLE’s approach to making AI in agriculture accessible, interoperable, and impactful — fostering collaboration between computer scientists, agricultural engineers, and domain stakeholders to accelerate innovation in sustainable farming systems.

ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours
2026-03-10 15:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | Zoom webinar
Get answers to your questions related to proposal submission, active NAIRR Pilot awards, ACCESS MATCH submissions, and ACCESS resource usage and support during ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours.
SCIPE Cyberinfrastructure Professionals (CIPs) and representatives from NSF’s ACCESS program host Office Hours, and members of the NAIRR Pilot operations teams and Pilot partners regularly attend.
Please provide a detailed description of your issue or help request at the time of registration to give them an opportunity to prepare for your consultation. If your issue isn’t resolved during Office Hours, SCIPE CIPs or ACCESS staff will connect you with the appropriate Resource Provider team.
March 10, 2026
3:00-4:00 PM EST
Registration
Learn more about ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours

ICICLE: Food Supply Networks and AI - A Four Part Webinar Series * WEBINAR II *
2026-03-20 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Chicago)
Direct Link: https://cias.wisc.edu/news/food-supply-networks-and-ai-a-four-webinar-series/

Webinar 2: “Open knowledge on the U.S. food systems to support decision-making” with Dr. Deniz Berfin Karakoc, Arizona State University

Friday, March 20, 2026
Noon-1:30PM Central Time
Zoom link: https://uwmadison.zoom.us/meeting/register/ArXZahoCQWisUkIxE2SLTA

Abstract: Agricultural and food systems are vital for feeding humanity. Along these complex systems, flow of the perishable goods between the supply and demand locations is facilitated by multi-modal transportation infrastructure. While safeguarding the flow of agri-food commodities against a set of unforeseen threats such as pandemics, socio-political disputes, economic crises, and extreme weather events is paramount, it is also a challenging goal. In this talk, I will propose interdisciplinary approaches to generate fine resolution food flow information. I will further discuss network science and optimization techniques to assess resilience, efficiency, and sustainability characteristics of the U.S. food systems. In particular, I will present three frameworks to (i) estimate the temporal agri-food flows between the U.S counties, (ii) identify the logistics hubs within the U.S. agri-food supply chains, and (iii) assess the agri-food specific load on the U.S. highways, railways, and waterways. These efforts can guide policy- and decision-making regarding food security.
Bio: Deniz Berfin Karakoc is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence at Arizona State University. She holds a Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a specialization area in Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure Systems. Her research focuses on developing interdisciplinary frameworks to model agri-food systems across spatial scales and enhance their resilience, sustainability, and equity characteristics. During her studies, she was awarded the 2019 Best Thesis Award from the University of Oklahoma and the 2023-2024 Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was also part of the 2023 CEE Rising Stars cohort at MIT. Her recent publications have been featured in Nature Food, Environmental Research Letters, and Environmental Science & Technology.

ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours
2026-03-25 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Zoom webinar
Get answers to your questions related to proposal submission, active NAIRR Pilot awards, ACCESS MATCH submissions, and ACCESS resource usage and support during ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours.
SCIPE Cyberinfrastructure Professionals (CIPs) and representatives from NSF’s ACCESS program host Office Hours, and members of the NAIRR Pilot operations teams and Pilot partners regularly attend.
Please provide a detailed description of your issue or help request at the time of registration to give them an opportunity to prepare for your consultation. If your issue isn’t resolved during Office Hours, SCIPE CIPs or ACCESS staff will connect you with the appropriate Resource Provider team.
March 25, 2026
12:00-1:00 PM EST
Registration
Learn more about ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours

ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours
2026-04-14 15:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | Zoom webinar
Get answers to your questions related to proposal submission, active NAIRR Pilot awards, ACCESS MATCH submissions, and ACCESS resource usage and support during ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours.
SCIPE Cyberinfrastructure Professionals (CIPs) and representatives from NSF’s ACCESS program host Office Hours, and members of the NAIRR Pilot operations teams and Pilot partners regularly attend.
Please provide a detailed description of your issue or help request at the time of registration to give them an opportunity to prepare for your consultation. If your issue isn’t resolved during Office Hours, SCIPE CIPs or ACCESS staff will connect you with the appropriate Resource Provider team.
April 14, 2026
3:00-4:00 PM EST
Registration
Learn more about ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours

ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours
2026-04-22 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Zoom webinar
Get answers to your questions related to proposal submission, active NAIRR Pilot awards, ACCESS MATCH submissions, and ACCESS resource usage and support during ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours.
SCIPE Cyberinfrastructure Professionals (CIPs) and representatives from NSF’s ACCESS program host Office Hours, and members of the NAIRR Pilot operations teams and Pilot partners regularly attend.
Please provide a detailed description of your issue or help request at the time of registration to give them an opportunity to prepare for your consultation. If your issue isn’t resolved during Office Hours, SCIPE CIPs or ACCESS staff will connect you with the appropriate Resource Provider team.
April 22, 2026
12:00-1:00 PM EST
Registration
Learn more about ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours

ICICLE: Food Supply Networks and AI - A Four Part Webinar Series * WEBINAR III *
2026-04-23 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Chicago)
Direct Link: https://cias.wisc.edu/news/food-supply-networks-and-ai-a-four-webinar-series/

Webinar 3: “Food flows and digital twins: making food network information actionable” with Dr. Kushank Bajaj, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization

Thursday, April 23, 2026
Noon-1:30PM Central Time
Zoom link: https://uwmadison.zoom.us/meeting/register/PTZQvi9PRPeAG88_1uV6GQ

Abstract: Ensuring global food security is increasingly challenging as climate change, geopolitical disruptions, and resource constraints place growing stress on food systems. To respond effectively, we need a much clearer picture of where food is produced, how it moves through supply chains, and where vulnerabilities emerge along the way.
In this talk, Kushank will share two projects that aim to make food flows more visible and actionable. The first is Canada Food Flows, a data product and knowledge-mobilization tool that traces how fruits and vegetables move from domestic and international sources to Canadian provinces over time. The project highlights practical methods—and transparent sensitivity analyses—for estimating food flows even in data-poor contexts.
The second project is the Global Food Twin, a high-resolution, open-source modeling framework that simulates the movement of 82 food commodities across nearly 3,800 subnational regions worldwide. Developed by the Better Planet Laboratory at the University of Colorado Boulder in partnership with Earth Genome, the model combines detailed production data with fine-scale population and dietary information to estimate regional food demand. A major advance is the integration of a supply-chain module that optimizes least-cost multimodal transport—across maritime, rail, road, and inland waterways—allowing the model to simulate over 13 million distinct pathways from producers to consumers around the globe. Together, these tools offer new ways to explore exposure, resilience, and risk in an increasingly interconnected global food system.

Bio: As a Data Scientist, Kushank combines complex data with interdisciplinary methods to drive action on sustainability and systemic risk. He currently works with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and earned his PhD from the University of British Columbia.
At the heart of his work is a commitment to making research and data more accessible, actionable, and relevant to those who need it most. He’s especially drawn to projects that are people- and policy-centered and believes that meaningful solutions to complex social problems emerge through collaboration, trust, and transdisciplinary thinking. He cares deeply about bridging the gap between research and practice. That means going beyond academic papers and technical reports to find ways of communicating insights that resonate—with policymakers, communities, and anyone trying to build a more just and sustainable world.

ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours
2026-05-12 15:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | Zoom webinar
Get answers to your questions related to proposal submission, active NAIRR Pilot awards, ACCESS MATCH submissions, and ACCESS resource usage and support during ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours.
SCIPE Cyberinfrastructure Professionals (CIPs) and representatives from NSF’s ACCESS program host Office Hours, and members of the NAIRR Pilot operations teams and Pilot partners regularly attend.
Please provide a detailed description of your issue or help request at the time of registration to give them an opportunity to prepare for your consultation. If your issue isn’t resolved during Office Hours, SCIPE CIPs or ACCESS staff will connect you with the appropriate Resource Provider team.
May 12, 2026
3:00-4:00 PM EST
Registration
Learn more about ACCESS / NAIRR Pilot Office Hours

ICICLE: Food Supply Networks and AI - A Four Part Webinar Series * WEBINAR IV *
2026-05-21 10:00 - 11:30 (America/Chicago)
Direct Link: https://cias.wisc.edu/news/food-supply-networks-and-ai-a-four-webinar-series/

Webinar 4: “AI tools for democratizing food networks – national, regional and local”, with Dr. Song Gao, UW-Geography and Geospatial Science Lab; Dr. Alfonso Morales, UW-Planning and Landscape Architecture, and Michelle Miller, UW-CALS Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems

Thursday, May 21 2026
10AM-11:30AM Central Time
Zoom link: https://uwmadison.zoom.us/meeting/register/jeGQtkFZRke5c1mCD5zZdA

Abstract: As the University of Wisconsin team at the National Science Foundation’s ICICLE AI Institute based in The Ohio State University, Gao, Morales and Miller work together to explore AI tools to characterize the food environment at the national, regional and local scales. In this talk, each will give a short introduction to their work at scale and the AI tools developed and used. Gao’s lab has explored food flow modeling with public data sets to uncover patterns in food movements. Miller works on regionalizing food movements with Wisconsin cooperatives and Tribal nations. Morales is building an information environment to better support local food markets. Together, these projects start to create a picture of our food networks at multiple scales and have resulted in the development of opensource AI tools that anyone can use to manage data more effectively. .
Bios: Song Gao, Associate Professor in Geography, uses spatial statistics and machine learning to increase understanding of human mobility patterns and human-place interactions. He develops and applies geospatial data science methods for better sensing of human behavior, socioeconomic characteristics, and urban dynamics. Many domains such as business intelligence, transportation, urban planning, public health, and environmental studies rely on spatial analysis and geographic information systems (GIS). Song is passionate about solving real-world challenges by connecting theoretical data science research to advancements in the GIS industry. Song especially values his collaborations with other scientists, scholars, and students on multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary projects, and learning from each other.
Alfonso Morales, Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture. He is interested in applying science to support society and to help produce social goods. For instance, his new software, FEAST (food equity access simulation technology), enables local government and nonprofit organizations to understand the consequences of changes in food access on populations and simulate responses. His six books and 100+ other publications cover social science theory and methods, organizations, various aspects of food systems, public marketplaces, and street vendors. He co-created the farm2facts.org toolkit for farmers market managers, used around the U.S.
Michelle Miller, researcher at CALS Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, is a practicing economic anthropologist engaged in participatory action research on food systems. Michelle has worked for state government and several national and international environmental organizations. She has worked with fruit growers to assist them in their efforts to reduce pesticide risk, build regional markets and establish living infrastructure to reduce soil erosion. Current projects focus on agriculture of the middle and regional food economies, food distribution and supply networks, Smart Foodsheds, resiliency and climate change.
