Welcome to AIVO News! Our newsletter features projects, events, and opportunities within the NSF AI Institutes Virtual Organization community.
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July 2025 Issue
Table of Contents:
- NSF AIVO Welcomes Two New AI Institutes
- SAIL 2025 Registration and Program
- Happenings in Ed4AI
- AI4Ed Fellowship Program Ends In August
- Student Spotlight: Thomas Manzini, Texas A&M University
- Roundup: In the AI Institutes Community
- NSF’s AI Institutes Power Innovation at the Intersection of AI & Science
- Submit an Extended Abstract by August 15: Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing’s 2nd Summit on Responsible Computing, AI, and Society
- Call for Papers and Demos by August 22: NSF ARNI, Meta, and Sophont’s “Foundation Models for the Brain and Body” NeurIPS 2025 Workshop
- NSF IAIFI Postdoc Fellowship Application Open
- NSF AI-SDM Researchers Explain “Why Drones and AI Can’t Quickly Find Missing Flood Victims, Yet”
NSF AIVO Welcomes Two New AI Institutes
The AI Institutes community is now 29 strong.
On July 29, 2025, NSF announced two new AI Institutes. Welcome to NSF AI Research Institute on Interaction for AI Assistants (NSF ARIA) and the NSF AI-Materials Institute (NSF AI-MI)!
Based at Brown University in Providence, RI, NSF ARIA was established by a NSF partnership with Intel. The Institute’s research team hails from Colby College; Dartmouth College; New York University; Carnegie Mellon University; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, San Diego; the University of New Mexico; the Santa Fe Institute; and Data and Society, an independent research institute in New York.
Based at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, NSF AI-MI was established by a NSF partnership with Capital One. The Institute is a collaboration between Boston University College of Engineering, CUNY City College Advanced Science Research Center at the Graduate Center, and Princeton University (Princeton Chemistry and Princeton Physics).
Read the announcement to learn more about NSF ARIA and NSF AI-MI, along with the new grants awarded to NSF AIVO, NSF IFML, NSF iSAT, and NSF MMLI. We will have more information about NSF AIVO’s grant-related plans in the next newsletter.
SAIL 2025 Registration and Program
SAIL registration is open!
Register early for the best rate: http://sail2025.aiinstitutes.org/.
- General Registration
- In person (through September 1, 2025) = $400
- Remote = $150
- In person (starting September 2, 2025) = $500
- Partner Registration (By invite only)
- Full SAIL Conference for Partners (October 21–23, 2025, in-person only) = $400
- Partner Showcase Day Only (October 22, 2025, in-person only) = $200
New Program Tracks for SAIL 2025
This year, AI Institute partners, prospective partners, and graduate students/postdocs can attend SAIL by AI Institute invite. The Partner Showcase on October 22 and the Graduate Student Workshop on October 21 are tracks designed for our new attendees.
- Learn more about the Partner Showcase.
- Contact NSF AIVO for information about the Graduate Student Workshop.
SAIL 2025 Panel Sessions
Wednesday, October 22:
- Interdisciplinary Research Collaborations: Success Stories
- Leveraging AI Institute Collaboration for Advocacy
- Industry Collaborations: Industry Perspectives
Thursday, October 23:
- Frontiers of AI: Recent Innovations, Hot Topics, and the Future of AI
- Scaling up Educational Programs Within Institutes
- AI-Augmented Human Capabilities
Visit the SAIL 2025 website to see the full program.
Happenings in Ed4AI
The Ed4AI program, supported by the Google.org grant, kicked off strong, thanks to the leadership of NSF AIVO’s Instructional Designer, Camille Woods. Here’s a glimpse into the program she’s founding.
We’ve enjoyed conducting landscaping of the AI Institutes’ education efforts, learning about what’s been created, what’s in the works now, who the audiences are, and what the formats of the instruction are.
AI Education Resource Portal
Our goal is to create an AI Education Resource Portal on the AIVO website, to be launched this fall. This portal will provide a way for all Institutes and the public to explore resources produced by the Institutes. Not only will the Portal provide a digital home for educational resources across Institutes, it will also contain links to curated resources from other trustworthy and reputable sources.
Camille has been busy conducting interviews with key education leads at NSF AI-SDM, NSF ARNI, AgAID, and AIFS, learning more about what they’re doing and how AIVO can help via instructional design consulting.
We plan to spotlight some of this work and more during the Ed4AI Workshop at SAIL on October 21, 2025. Thanks to all for collaborating with AIVO instructional design. We look forward to highlighting all the Institutes’ educational resources on the Portal!
AI4Ed Fellowship Program Ends in August
The AIVO AI Institute Summer Graduate Fellow Program is winding down. The fellowship culminates in an in-person symposium August 18–19, 2025 at the Illini Center in Chicago, IL.
The 12-week program led by NSF iSAT, NSF AI-ALOE, NSF EngageAI, NSF AI4ExceptionalEd, and NSF INVITE), which form the AI for Education SIG, was made possible through funding from Google.org for the AI4Ed program. All 15 fellows received supplemental stipends for working collaboratively with each other.
The fellowship program featured these edifying speakers!
- Academic Uses of GenAI Tools – H. Chad Lane, NSF INVITE
- Just Build It – Noah L. Schroeder, NSF INVITE
- Ethics of AI Explained and Embedding Ethics Into Artificial Intelligence – Clayton Peterson, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières
- How AI Institutes Actually Work – Managing Directors Panel:
Cindy Chan, NSF MMLI
Rajashi Runton, NSF Athena
Spyros Mylonas, NSF ARNI
Norman Gottron, NSF AI-SDM - Scaling for Impact – Chris Dede, NSF AI-ALOE
Look for details about the Summer Graduate Fellow Program Symposium in the next issue of AIVO News.
Student Spotlight: Thomas Manzini, Texas A&M University
PhD candidate Tom Manzini works at the Intersection of ML and disaster response on research with NSF AI-SDM. Learn how his team leverages disaster response aviation and computer science machine learning to help improve decision making for emergency managers and personnel.
Roundup: In the AI Institutes Community
It’s a busy summer in the AI Institutes realm. Let’s help spread the word about their important work!
Have some news to share about your AI Institute? Let us know at aivo@ucdavis.edu.
NSF’s AI Institutes Power Innovation at the Intersection of AI & Science
AIVO attended the AI+Science Summit in Washington, D.C. on July 23, 2025, where leaders from NSF-Simons CosmicAI, NSF IAIFI, and NSF MMLI spoke about the value of federal investment in AI research in science. NSF Program Director Erion Plaku moderated the panel discussion.
Submit an Extended Abstract by August 15: Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing’s 2nd Summit on Responsible Computing, AI, and Society
Explore the future of AI, machine learning, and computer vision in domains such as health, sustainability, education, and policy at the 2nd Summit on Responsible Computing, AI, and Society, October 27–29, 2025 in Atlanta, GA.
Extended abstracts (~750 words) are invited by August 15, 2025. Selected contributors will be invited to present their work at the Summit. Get more details about the call for contributions.
Call for Papers and Demos by August 22: NSF ARNI, Meta, and Sophont’s “Foundation Models for the Brain and Body” NeurIPS 2025 Workshop
NSF ARNI, alongside Meta and Sophont, is co-organizing and sponsoring the “Foundation Models for the Brain and Body” NeurIPS 2025 Workshop. Explore 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.
This interdisciplinary workshop brings researchers from neuroscience, biomedicine, wearable tech, and ML together to tackle the unique challenges of biosignal data and shape the future of foundation models for brain and body.
Papers and demos are invited by August 22. The call for travel awards is due by August 22. Learn more about the Workshop and call.
NSF IAIFI Postdoc Fellowship Application Open
NSF IAIFI is seeking early-career scientists working at the intersection of Physics and AI for its Postdoctoral Fellowship. The program aims to appoint new postdoctoral Fellows each academic year, for a three-year fellowship term each.
Applicants should have, or expect to receive, a PhD in Physics, Statistics, Computer Science or a related field by September 1, 2026. Applications are due by October 8, 2025.
Learn more about the fellowship on the NSF IAIFI website.
NSF AI-SDM Researchers Explain “Why Drones and AI Can’t Quickly Find Missing Flood Victims, Yet”
NSF AI-SDM researchers Dr. Robyn Murphy and PhD Candidate Thomas Manzini, who study the use of drones during disasters, were recently featured in a Yahoo! News post. The two robotics researchers discuss AI-human collaboration and the deployment of AI during disasters.
