Conference: Symposium on Closing Strategy Gaps for the Future of AI Infrastructure

This project supports a symposium on closing critical strategy gaps for the future of artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. As AI becomes increasingly important to national competitiveness, economic growth, and scientific discovery, continued progress depends not only on advances in algorithms but also on the systems that support their development and deployment. These systems include computing hardware, energy and water resources, thermal management, policy frameworks, and workforce preparation. The symposium convenes experts from academia, industry, and government to examine these interconnected challenges and to identify pathways toward a more resilient, efficient, and sustainable AI ecosystem. Through keynote talks, panel discussions, and breakout sessions, the symposium creates a forum for cross-sector dialogue on the infrastructure needs of the AI era. The symposium also includes a strong educational component by examining the knowledge, skills, and perspectives needed for graduate students and early-career professionals to thrive in a rapidly changing technical landscape. By engaging researchers, technologists, policy experts, and students, the activity broadens participation in conversations that are often separated by disciplinary and institutional boundaries. A summary report disseminates the major findings and provides guidance for future research, education, policy, and industrial practice. The focus of this symposium is the widening gap between rapid advances in AI and machine learning and the physical and regulatory infrastructure required to support reliable, scalable, and sustainable deployment. The symposium studies this problem by integrating perspectives on advanced computing hardware, high-performance system design, data center resource demands, and regulatory constraints that shape technology development and use. Specific topics include advanced silicon and packaging, graphics processing units and other accelerators, power delivery, water use, and thermal management, as well as export controls and related policy considerations. The symposium also examines the transition from centralized cloud computing to edge and embodied AI, where intelligent processing moves to local devices and autonomous systems with stringent requirements for safety, reliability, and energy efficiency. The scope of the research activity centers on defining the most important infrastructure challenges for the next era of AI and clarifying how software, hardware, environmental constraints, and public policy interact. The symposium uses invited presentations and structured discussion to identify key research questions, engineering tradeoffs, and collaborative opportunities across sectors. By bringing together complementary expertise from multiple communities, the symposium develops a holistic research agenda and produces a roadmap for future investments in AI infrastructure and workforce development. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. NSF Award ID: 2619116 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Ang Li | Institution: University of Maryland, College Park, COLLEGE PARK, MD | Award Amount: $49,600 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2619116 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2619116.html