The collaboration, led by Northwestern University, will establish the NSF-Simons AI Institute for the Sky (SkAI), which will be one of two new centers designed to help astronomers unlock new insights into the universe. The institute, based near NCSA's Illinois campus, will bring together 83 researchers from 25 organizations, including NCSA, Northwestern, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and other leading institutions, to develop AI tools for analyzing astronomical data and improving physics-based simulations.

"Our mission at the Center for AstroPhysical Surveys (CAPS) in NCSA has been to bring together innovative software and cutting-edge hardware to tackle the most pressing questions in the universe," said SkAI co-principal investigator and CAPS Deputy Director Gautham Narayan.

"We're very excited to have our students, postdocs, faculty and staff deepen our involvement with our colleagues at Northwestern and U of Chicago, provide the entire SkAI community access to NSF's Delta and DeltaAI supercomputers here at NCSA and build tools and services that lead to AI methods becoming more interpretable and reliable. Our goal is to democratize AI and make it more trustworthy - not just for astrophysics and cosmology, or our campus, but for everyone. This is a big leap forward, and Illinois will lead the way."

SkAI aims to overcome challenges posed by vast astronomical datasets from surveys like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and the CMB-Stage 4 experiment. "I am thrilled to receive this opportunity to work with our amazing cross-disciplinary, multi-institutional team, so we can accelerate the data-driven revolution that wide and deep sky surveys will bring to the field of astronomy," said Northwestern's Vicky Kalogera, SkAI director and principal investigator of the grant.

"We will transform our astrophysical understanding across an enormous range of scales - from stars and the transients they produce to the evolving galaxies they live in, the black holes they form, and to the dark sector of the universe and its cosmological origins."

The initiative also prioritizes open science, diversity, and educational outreach. Through partnerships with community colleges, minority-serving institutions, and public engagement initiatives, SkAI will work to lower barriers to STEM fields and provide workforce-development resources from high school to postdoctoral levels. "Our research will be guided by AI ethics principles and all SkAI members will be trained in key AI ethics practices," Narayan said.

"Our commitment to open collaboration ensures that SkAI research products are adopted widely. We will develop new, trustworthy AI tools in an open-source ecosystem and train a diverse generation of scientists and engineers to ethically apply and extend AI within academia and beyond."

"University of Illinois leadership and their vision in creating the Center for AstroPhysical Surveys has enabled us to get a head start in these areas, and was crucial to the success of SkAI, and their continuing support gives us the freedom and ability to innovate. By pushing the frontier of computing, we're reaching ever more distant horizons in the universe," Narayan added.

Related Links
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Understanding Time and Space