AI2ES Director Represents Institute, OU On Capitol Hill

 Amy McGovern, Lloyd G. and Joyce Austin Presidential Professor in the School of Meteorology and School of Computer Science at the University of Oklahoma, traveled to Capitol Hill to present the work of the NSF AI Institute for Research on Trustworthy AI in Weather, Climate, and Coastal Oceanography (AI2ES) to the National Science Foundation and to members of Congress on Sept. 18-19, 2023. McGovern, who is the director of AI2ES, was joined by Kara Sulia, an AI2ES member from the University of Albany. 

This event, dubbed “AI on the Hill,” included directors and members of each of the 25 NSF-funded AI institutes.

“The goal was to showcase the amazing breadth and depth of the work being done in AI across the nation,” McGovern said. 

NSF has funded 25 separate AI institutes cumulatively since 2020. AI2ES was one of the first seven institutes, and each year, NSF has sponsored approximately 7-10 more. The impact of the institutes can be seen across all aspects of society, including agriculture, healthcare, privacy, education, and more. In total, NSF has invested half a billion dollars in the AI institutes nationwide.  

During the event, McGovern and Sulia highlighted AI2ES’s groundbreaking research in developing novel AI methods for a wide variety of weather and climate applications. 

“We focused on impactful weather across the nation, with hands-on demos of severe weather, tropical cyclones, and winter weather,” McGovern said. “We had non-stop visitors from a variety of congressional offices, including staffers from both senators and representatives as well as people from other government agencies.” 

Learn more about AI2ES at https://www.ai2es.org/