Thomas A. DeFanti, Ph.D.
Research Scientist, UCSD
Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, UIC
CENIC Senior Advisor
Thomas A. DeFanti, Ph.D., is a principal investigator at the Qualcomm Institute, part of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, University of California, San Diego, and serves as an advisor to Louis Fox, CENIC's president and CEO. Dr. DeFanti is also a distinguished professor emeritus of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, since 2004. He received the 1988 ACM Outstanding Contribution Award and was appointed an ACM Fellow in 1994. He shares the recognition with EVL director Daniel J. Sandin for conceiving the award-winning CAVE virtual reality theater in 1991 and has been active in regional, national, and international networking R&E for over 30 years.
November 6, 2024 | 9am-10am | PLN-130
Inclusion, Innovation, and Competitiveness: Investing in Research & Education AI Infrastructure
Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are opening new career paths for students at all levels who will become the next facilitators of academic research and private sector innovation, with the potential to transform society in positive and beneficial ways. To facilitate this transformation a national-level “AI Resource” that is open-access, scalable, and grown through the contributions of its user community has been launched and is now online, encompassing both the infrastructure, and the communities that use it: The National Research Platform (NRP). Its California subset is called the CENIC AI Resource (CENIC AIR). CENIC AIR provides California’s universities an extensive platform to enable their faculty and students to contribute constructively to this transformation and collaborate extensively with colleagues nationwide over the same infrastructure. For California to continue its leadership in AI, faculty, and students need increased access to training, research, and class lab facilities in a persistent, sustained, evolving infrastructure. CENIC AIR is a community cloud that we all own and operate collaboratively; the presentation will describe it in detail.
