IAIFI News Archive
IAIFI Affiliate Dan Roberts writes about about using physics to understand AI risk. Read “Black Holes and the Intelligence Explosion”. December 12, 2023
IAIFI Fellow Siddharth Mishra-Sharma named one of the 2023 Rising Stars in Data Science by the University of Chicago. Read more about Siddharth’s recognition. November 30, 2023
IAIFI Fellow Ge Yang and collaborators receive Best Paper Award at the Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) 2023. Read “Distilled Feature Fields Enable Few-Shot Manipulation”. November 14, 2023
IAIFI Investigators Max Tegmark and Ziming Liu featured with collaborators in Quanta Magazine. Read about their work on “The Physical Process That Powers a New Type of Generative AI”. November 14, 2023
Carlos Arguelles-Delgado, Harvard Assistant Professor of Physics and IAIFI Senior Investigator, named 2023 Packard Fellow. Read more about Carlos’ research and the award. October 20, 2023
On September 18-19, 2023, Jesse Thaler, Mike Williams, and Marisa LaFleur visited the NSF and Congress, along with other NSF AI Institutes, as part of the NSF AI Hill Day, where Jesse and Mike met congressional staffers to share the work of IAIFI and discuss the importance of AI for Science. October 5, 2023
On July 21, 2023, many IAIFI Senior Investigators, Fellows, postdocs, and students presented at The Impact of ChatGPT and other Large Language Models on Physics Research and Education. Watch Workshop recordings. September 19, 2023
Max Tegmark, MIT Professor of Physics and IAIFI Senior Investigator, featured on the TIME100 Most Influential People in AI. Read Max’s feature. September 7, 2023
Nabil Laoudji writes about his experience at the 2023 IAIFI Summer Worskhop. Read Nabil’s post on LinkedIn, where he shares his experience attending the 2023 IAIFI Summer Workshop. August 29, 2023
Philip Harris, MIT Assistant Professor and IAIFI Senior Investigator, earns MIT Teaching With Digital Technology Award: The student-nominated award recognizes Phil for effectively using digital technology to improve teaching and learning at MIT. Read about the 2023 winners. June 21, 2023
Marisa LaFleur, IAIFI Project Manager, awarded MIT Infinite Mile Award: The award recognizes Marisa’s dedication and contribution to the School of Science and to IAIFI. Read about the 2023 winners. May 15, 2023
Justin Solomon, MIT Associate Professor and IAIFI Affiliate, named Edgerton Award winner: The award recognizes Justin’s exceptional distinction in teaching, research, and service at MIT. Read MIT Newsletter profile on Justin Solomon. April 19, 2023
Brian Nord, MLK Scholar and IAIFI Visitor, featured in MIT News: Read “Understanding our place in the universe”. April, 12, 2023
Pulkit Agrawal featured in MIT News: IAIFI Senior Investigator Pulkit Agrawal, and collaborators Gabriel Margolis and Yandong Ji have developed a legged robotic system that can dribble a soccer ball under the same conditions as humans. “Our goal in developing algorithms for legged robots is to provide autonomy in challenging and complex terrains that are currently beyond the reach of robotic systems.” April 3, 2023
Brian Nord, MLK Scholar, interviewed for MIT’s Institute Community & Equity Office: Watch Brian discuss Artificial Intelligence and social advocacy. February, 8, 2023
Lina Necib recognized as a rising star in astronomy by Astronomy magazine: Read Astronomy magazine’s profile on Lina Necib as part of their rising stars in astronomy issue. January, 3, 2023
IAIFI sponsors the Machine Learning and the Physical Sciences workshop: IAIFI was pleased to sponsor the Machine Learning and the Physical Sciences workshop at NeurIPS 2022 and to see many IAIFI researchers present papers. View papers from IAIFI researchers at the workshop. December 3, 2022
Jesse Thaler provides insight on the potential of AI for physics discovery: Read “Will artificial intelligence ever discover new laws of physics?” November 21, 2022
Matt Schwartz publishes editorial on AI interpretability in Nature Physics: Read “Should artificial intelligence be interpretable to humans?” by IAIFI Senior Investigator Matt Schwartz. November 2, 2022
Jesse Thaler named American Physical Society Fellow for 2022: APS honored IAIFI Director and MIT Professor of Physics, Jesse Thaler, was selected as an APS Fellow “for original foundational research contributions, leadership, and mentoring in the area of machine learning for fundamental physics. October 27, 2022
Lina Necib receives 2023 APS Valley Prize: IAIFI Senior Investigator and MIT Assistant Professor of Physics, Lina Necib, was recognized with the 2023 Valley Prize for Dark Matter, which recognizes “an early-career individual for an outstanding contribution to physics that is deemed to have significant potential for a dramatic impact on the field.” Lina was chosen for “the discovery of a massive, previously unknown stellar structure that may have shaped the history of the Milky Way, and the development of groundbreaking new methods to study our Galaxy’s dark matter halo and growth history.” October 17, 2022
IAIFI participates in the 2022 Cambridge Science Festival! IAIFI hosted a robot demonstration and a galaxy zoo demonstration for the Cambridge Science Festival at both an Open Lab event on Thursday, October 6, 2022 and at the Carnival on Sunday, October 9, 2022. Learn more about what we shared. October 9, 2022
Tracy Slatyer and Jesse Thaler receive Simons Investigator awards: Read more about their work recognized by the program, which supports “outstanding theoretical scientists in their most productive years, when they are establishing creative new research directions, providing leadership to the field, and effectively mentoring junior scientists.” June 24, 2022
Dan Roberts publishes book on deep learning theory: Learn more about the new book The Principles of Deep Learning Theory by IAIFI Affiliate Dan Roberts and his collaborators Sho Yaida and Boris Hanin. May 26, 2022
Serhii Kryhin receives MIT’s Morse/Orloff Research Award: IAIFI Junior Investigator and MIT senior in physics Serhii Kryhin was recognized with the Morse/Orloff Research Award, which is “awarded to a senior of high academic standing in physics who plans to pursue graduate studies in physics.” May 25, 2022
Jesse Thaler joins CACM and AI Institute leaders for virtual panel discussion: Watch the virtual panel discussion hosted by Communications of the ACM on February 1, 2022 to discuss how science and AI are transforming each other, featuring IAIFI Director Jesse Thaler, Anima Anandkumar (NVIDIA Director of ML Research), Vikram Adve (Director, AIFARMS National AI Institute), and Amy McGovern (Director, NSF AI Institute for Research on Trustworthy AI in Weather, Climate, and Coastal Oceanography). March 29, 2022
IAIFI researchers’ model-free reinforcement learning system breaks the record for fastest robotic mini cheetah run recorded: Featured in MIT News and NSF Science Now, IAIFI Fellow Ge Yang, Senior Investigator Pulkit Agrawal, and collaborator Gabriel Margolis trained the robot in simulation under variable conditions, which made it more robust when deployed in the real world—a strategy expected to be relevant for making real-time adjustments in the operation of experiments to maximize the physics reach. March 22, 2022
IAIFI welcomes UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning & Advanced Computing (AIMLAC): IAIFI hosted 15 AIMLAC students and faculty for an informal workshop March 2 through March 4, 2022, where the two groups shared research and education strategies, and had opportunities for networking. March 4, 2022
Second Round of IAIFI Fellows Announced: The next round of IAIFI Fellows (2022-2025), Denis Boyda, Carolina Cuesta, and Jessie Micallef, will join us later in 2022 and help spark vital interdisciplinary research at the intersection of Physics and AI! January, 28, 2022
IAIFI Senior Investigator Phiala Shanahan receives 2021 Wu-Ki Tung Award for Early Career Research on QCD: Phiala was recognized “for pioneering studies of long-wavelength and nuclear non-perturbative QCD effects in discretized space and time, and for applications of machine learning to lattice field theory.” January 24, 2022
IAIFI Junior Investigator Harold Erbin receives MIT Infinite Expansion Award: Harold was selected as one of the recipients of MIT’s Infinite Expansion Award for 2022 because of his “exemplary service on the IAIFI ECEC” and being “actively involved in many other IAIFI community building efforts.” January 10, 2022
IAIFI Senior Investigator Pulkit Agrawal and collaborators receive Best Paper Award at Conference on Robot Learning: The paper was chosen for “The sheer scope and variation across objects tested with this method, and the range of different policy architectures and approaches tested.” Read “A System for General In-Hand Object Re-Orientation”, November 12, 2021
IAIFI Senior Investigator Philip Harris establishes NSF-Funded Institute with collaborators: Philip Harris will serve as Deputy Director of the Accelerated AI Algorithms for Data-Driven Discovery (A3D3) Institute, using Artificial Intelligence to accelerate discoveries in physics, astronomy, and neuroscience. October 29, 2021
IAIFI Fellow Siddharth Mishra-Sharma and Senior Investigator Phiala Shanahan interviewed for Nature Careers: Read “How AI is helping the natural sciences”, October 13, 2021
Jesse Thaler argues that particle physicists must go beyond deep learning and design AI capable of deep thinking: Read his opinion piece in the CERN Courier, September 2, 2021
Jesse Thaler interviewed for Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery: Read Jesse Thaler’s interview on Using AI to Drill Down in Physics, July 8, 2021
Philip Harris receives Department of Energy Early Career Research Award for 2021: The award provides “exceptional researchers during the crucial early career years” with significant funding to support their research. Philip Harris was selected for his research, “Harnessing the Large Hadron Collider with New Insights in Real-Time Data Processing and Artificial Intelligence.” DOE announces 2021 Early Career Research Awards, May 27, 2021
IAIFI Senior Investigators present at EmTech Digital Conference 2021: Watch Jesse Thaler, Phiala Shanahan, and Pulkit Agrawal present Master Classes for MIT Technology Review’s EmTech Digital Conference 2021: IAIFI Master Classes on YouTube, April 20, 2021
Bill Freeman elected member of National Academy of Engineering: “For contributions to computer vision and image enhancement.” National Academy of Engineering, February 9, 2021
“Can a Computer Devise a Theory of Everything?”: Max Tegmark and Jesse Thaler weigh in on this provocative question in a New York Times article by Dennis Overbye, November 23, 2020
AI for Cosmology: Read about Cora Dvorkin’s work on using machine learning to study the structure of the universe, particularly subhalos of dark matter: Quanta Magazine, Harvard Gazette, November 5, 2020
Phiala Shanahan Wins 2020 Kenneth G. Wilson Award: “For excellence in the study of hadrons and nuclei in lattice QCD and for pioneering the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to lattice field theory.” International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, October 23, 2020
Phiala Shanahan Wins 2021 Maria Goeppert Mayer Award: “For key insights into the structure and interactions of hadrons and nuclei using numerical and analytical methods and pioneering the use of machine learning techniques in lattice quantum field theory calculations in particle and nuclear physics.” American Physical Society, October 7, 2020
Phiala Shanahan Named One of Ten Scientists to Watch: Science News, September 30, 2020
Provably Exact AI for Nuclear and Particle Physics: Read about recent research by Tej Kanwar, Phiala Shanahan (IAIFI Research Coordinator for Physics Theory), and collaborators at MIT, NYU, and Google Deep Mind on using machine learning to explore fundamental forces of nature: MIT News, Physical Review Letters, September 24, 2020
Tracy Slatyer Awarded 2021 New Horizons Prize in Physics: MIT News, September 10, 2020
IAIFI Launch: On August 26, 2020, the National Science Foundation announced the creation of the NSF AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions! Full story
IAIFI Launch
August 26, 2020
Today, the National Science Foundation announced the creation of the NSF AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions!
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today an investment of over $100 million to establish five NSF AI Institutes, each receiving about 20 million dollars over five years. One of these, the NSF AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI), will be led by MIT’s Laboratory for Nuclear Science (LNS) and involves both physics and AI researchers at MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, and Tufts.
The IAIFI will advance physics knowledge – from the smallest building blocks of nature to the largest structures in the Universe – and galvanize AI research innovation.
“Recognizing the critical role of AI, NSF is investing in collaborative research and education hubs, such as the NSF IAIFI anchored at MIT, which will bring together academia, industry, and government to unearth profound discoveries and develop new capabilities,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “Just as prior NSF investments enabled the breakthroughs that have given rise to today’s AI revolution, the awards being announced today will drive discovery and innovation that will sustain American leadership and competitiveness in AI for decades to come.”
You can find more info on our iaifi.org page and in the following press releases: NSF, NSF blog, MIT, Harvard, and Northeastern.
2021-2024 IAIFI Fellows
August 26, 2020
Today, we launched our IAIFI postdoctoral fellows program! Applications for the inaugural group of IAIFI Fellows are due October 20, 2020.
AI technologies are advancing rapidly, making it both important and challenging to train junior researchers at the intersection of physics and AI. The IAIFI aims to recruit and train a talented and diverse group of early-career researchers, including at the postdoctoral level through its IAIFI Fellows Program.
“By offering our Fellows their choice of research problems, and the chance to focus on cutting-edge challenges in physics and AI, we will prepare many talented young scientists to become future leaders in both academia and industry,” says MIT professor of physics Marin Soljacic.
IAIFI researchers hope these Fellows will spark interdisciplinary and multi-investigator collaborations, generate new ideas and approaches, translate physics challenges beyond their native domains, and help develop a common language across disciplines.
See our Fellows page for more information.
2021-2024 IAIFI Fellows: IAIFI is pleased to announce our 2021-2024 IAIFI Fellowship Program. The deadline for full applications is October 20, 2020. Full story