SUNY Chancellor King Announces 2024 SUNY-IBM AI Research Alliance Awardees

October 28, 2024

14 Faculty Members Selected from SUNY's Four University Centers

SUNY, IBM Have Partnered Since 2019 to Advance AI Research and Innovation

Albany, NY – State University of New York Chancellor John B. King Jr. today announced the 2024 SUNY-IBM AI Research Alliance grant recipients. Fourteen outstanding researchers from SUNY's four university centers have been awarded grants this year for projects ranging from cloud computing to sustainable energy to optimizing the next generation of supercomputers. This alliance is part of a partnership between New York State and IBM to create a global research hub for developing next-generation AI hardware.

The partnership has resulted in the launch of 22 projects. The alliance aims to promote scientific research, innovation, and technology commercialization opportunities by leveraging both parties' research expertise, strategic interests, and key assets in AI and related areas. This partnership enhances and enriches both SUNY's and IBM's capabilities and underscores their commitment to advancing AI for economic growth and common good.

SUNY is a founding member of Governor Kathy Hochul's Empire AI Consortium, which is supported by over $400 million in public and private resources. Empire AI will cement New York State's position at the vanguard of AI research and development, as it prepares students for careers in the rapidly emerging field. SUNY researchers are committed to using AI for social good, including developing new technologies that address food insecurity, the shortage of speech-language pathologists in K-12 education, information integrity and deepfakes, and the need for improved stroke treatment and medical imaging.

"As AI becomes further interwoven into every aspect of our society—from education and entertainment to healthcare and industry—SUNY has a central role to play in keeping New York State at the forefront of AI research and development," said SUNY Chancellor King. "Thanks to our partners at IBM, we can keep the momentum going by taking on significant AI research endeavors. Our SUNY faculty and researchers are truly exceptional, and it is through their dedication that SUNY will position New York State as a leader in artificial intelligence research and development thanks in part to the significant New York State investment and resources in the Empire AI consortium. We are particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of this work being centered right here in the Empire State."

SUNY Board Trustee Stanley Litow said, "Artificial Intelligence is a continuously emerging and innovative field that SUNY researchers have been exploring for years, seeking new and creative ways to enhance AI use for the public good. This partnership with IBM underscores the significance of these discoveries. I congratulate this year's awardees for their incredible efforts to improve our understanding and use of artificial intelligence and look forward to seeing the continued results, and benefits of the hard work that has come and will continue from this partnership."

Dr. Mukesh Khare, General Manager of IBM Semiconductors and Vice President of Hybrid Cloud Research at IBM, said, "Advances in AI hardware and software are leading to new opportunities that can improve how we work, live, learn and interact with one another like never before. As AI technology becomes ubiquitous in our day-to-day lives, it's critical that we leverage this technology to discover and enhance the world around us, particularly for the public good. IBM is proud to join SUNY in supporting AI innovation through the SUNY-IBM AI Research Alliance Awards and congratulates this year's award winners."

The fourteen awardees represent each of SUNY's four university centers including the University at Albany, Binghamton University, the University at Buffalo, and Stony Brook University. The awardees are:

University at Albany

Nate Cady – Project Titled: Resistive Random Access Memory (RRAM) for AI Applications
Jason D'Cruz – Project Titled: Trustworthy-AI from a User Perspective
Kathleen Dunn – Project Titled: Strengthening hybrid bonding through understanding of orbital exchange
Penghang Yin – Project Titled: Quantization and Compression of Large AI Models

Binghamton University

Junghyun Cho – Project Titled: Mechanistic Understanding of the Cu/Oxide Hybrid Bonding
Kanad Ghose – Project Titled: Design-Space Exploration Tool Suite for Heterogeneously-Integrated AI Systems
Kaiyan Yu – Project Titled: Ray-based Functional Regression with Federated Learning (Ray-F2R-FL)
Zimo Wang – Project Titled: Advanced smart sensing and analytics scheme for rapid incipient anomaly diagnosis, reliability study, and causality analysis for underfill warpage of flip-chip packaging processes

University at Buffalo

Tevfik Kosar – Project Titled: GreenAICode: Sustainable AI Model Development through Energy-aware Code Refactoring
Baishakhi Mazumder – Project Titled: Enhancing conductance and reliability through atomistic investigation and optimization of hybrid bonding
Jinjun Xiong – Project Titled: Physics-informed Graph Neural Networks and Novel Graph Representation for Chiplet-based Physical Design Synthesis Closure

Stony Brook University

Niranjan Balasubramanian – Project Titled: Low-Cost and Energy-Efficient Distributed Training of Large Language Models
Mike Ferdman – Project Titled: RISC-V AI Accelerator for Foundation Models
Erez Zadok – Project Titled: Multi-cloud Hybrid GPU Clusters for AI Workloads

The Alliance is under the joint leadership of SUNY Senior Vice Chancellor for Research Shadi Sandvik and Mukesh Khare, IBM Vice President and General Manager of IBM Semiconductor. A Scientific Advisory Council of distinguished faculty members and research leaders from the two institutions provide strategic direction and guidance. Research projects are jointly envisioned and conducted by SUNY faculty and IBM researchers. The first research projects launched in 2020 span AI applications in healthcare, hardware for next-generation AI systems, and AI-driven modeling and simulation.

University at Albany Vice President for Research and Economic Development Thenkurussi "Kesh" Kesavadas said, "UAlbany researchers are developing more powerful and efficient AI hardware and models without losing sight of critical questions about their trustworthiness and the ethics of their use. This is exactly the kind of innovative interdisciplinary work we envisioned when UAlbany launched its AI Plus initiative, and these collaborations highlight how our researchers are working thoughtfully with industry to advance our understanding of artificial intelligence and its deployment for the public good."

Binghamton University President Harvey Stenger said, "My congratulations go out to Junghyun, Kanad, Bing and Zimo on receiving the SUNY-IBM AI Research Alliance Award. They are all doing incredible research and this award will allow them to further their scholarship in an emerging field at a very important time in its development. I'm proud to see SUNY and IBM partnering to make New York a leader in AI, and doing so with ethics and sustainability at the forefront."

University at Buffalo Vice President for Research and Economic Development Venu Govindaraju, PhD said, "The University at Buffalo has been a leader in artificial intelligence for more than four decades and continues to build on this legacy as the home of Empire AI. Congratulations to all of the awardees, including three from UB who join more than 200 faculty members actively engaged in AI-related research throughout the university and at UB's four AI-focused centers and institutes."

Stony Brook University Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences Andrew Singer said, "We are excited to see such impactful research from Stony Brook Computer Science faculty in the SUNY-IBM AI Research Alliance awardees. Professors Balasubramanian, Ferdman and Zadok are working to develop tools and solutions for efficient execution of large-scale AI systems encompassing both hardware and software-based approaches toward reducing system costs and enhancing performance, while dramatically improving their energy requirements and carbon footprint, which is the single largest challenge of the current AI revolution."

About the State University of New York
The State University of New York is the largest comprehensive system of higher education in the United States, and more than 95 percent of all New Yorkers live within 30 miles of any one of SUNY’s 64 colleges and universities. Across the system, SUNY has four academic health centers, five hospitals, four medical schools, two dental schools, a law school, the country’s oldest school of maritime, the state’s only college of optometry, and manages one US Department of Energy National Laboratory. In total, SUNY serves about 1.4 million students amongst its entire portfolio of credit- and non-credit-bearing courses and programs, continuing education, and community outreach programs. SUNY oversees nearly a quarter of academic research in New York. Research expenditures system-wide are nearly $1.1 billion in fiscal year 2023, including significant contributions from students and faculty. There are more than three million SUNY alumni worldwide, and one in three New Yorkers with a college degree is a SUNY alum. To learn more about how SUNY creates opportunities, visit suny.edu.