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The U.S. National Science Foundation has announced funding for 25 projects, totaling over $20 million, through the Collaborations in Artificial Intelligence and Geosciences (CAIG) program. This investment aims to advance the development and implementation of innovative AI techniques in geosciences while increasing technical capacity and expanding access to education and training opportunities for using AI approaches in geosciences research.

“The CAIG program presents an exciting opportunity to address big questions in geosciences research while fostering collaborations between geoscientists and AI experts,” said Wendy Graham, the director of the NSF Division of Research, Innovation, Synergies, and Education. “All 25 of the CAIG projects will foster transdisciplinary partnerships that lead to innovation in both AI and geosciences. These projects will provide cross-training for AI and geoscience knowledge, significantly building our capacity to study and analyze extreme weather, solar activity and earthquake hazards, among many topics.”

The program promotes transdisciplinary collaborations among geoscientists, computer scientists, mathematicians and others to drive transformative discoveries, innovations and solutions. Research teams will adopt various AI techniques — such as generative AI, surrogate models, causal AI and other AI approaches — to advance understanding of complex Earth systems. Topics include increasing efficiency and enhancing utility and equity of geoscience models; improving forecasting, preparation and mitigation for natural hazards; enhancing understanding of earthquake dynamics; improving natural resource management and decision-making in response to

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The U.S. National Science Foundation is investing $39 million to help grow quantum research activities at more institutions across America through the NSF Expanding Capacity in Quantum Information Science and Engineering (ExpandQISE) program. This investment will fund 23 research projects aiming to break new ground in fields such as quantum computing, sensors and materials. The funding will directly support research, training and educational activities through partnerships between established QISE programs at research-intensive institutions and up-and-coming programs at institutions seeking to build their quantum research and development infrastructure.

“Maintaining our country’s global leadership in quantum information science demands that we engage the full spectrum of talent that’s waiting to be unleashed from each and every U.S. community,” says NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “The NSF ExpandQISE program is simultaneously strengthening the quantum workforce and investing in the scientific and technological advances that will be the foundation for a quantum-enabled future.”

NSF developed the ExpandQISE program in support of priorities outlined in the “2018 National Quantum Initiative Act,” which was enacted to accelerate quantum research and development for the long-term economic and national security of the U.S. ExpandQISE aims to accelerate quantum-focused research by reducing barriers to participation and increasing the diversity and breadth of U.S. institutions doing that research.

The 23 new grants will support faculty and staff across a broad range of U.S. institutions of higher

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The U.S. National Science Foundation has made five awards totaling $75 million to support the creation of five biofoundries that will spur innovation, provide tools and technologies to researchers nationwide, and help advance biology, biotechnology, and the broader science, technology, engineering and mathematics enterprise. 

NSF BioFoundries are integrated facilities that enable researchers to rapidly design, create, test and streamline the development of tools and products to accelerate research to advance the bioeconomy. 

These facilities combine the latest advances in biological sciences, geosciences, biomaterials, chemical biology and bioengineering with tool development, automation, high throughput measurement, integrated data acquisition and analysis, and artificial intelligence and machine learning. By serving as user-facing facilities with complementary internal research programs, NSF BioFoundries will provide broad access to cutting-edge technology, workflows, processes and knowledge bases, and the design and scale-up capabilities necessary to ensure all ideas reach their potential.

Each NSF BioFoundry will focus on a different area of biology or biotechnology, but all will advance both in-house and user-initiated projects, train the next generation of the scientific workforce, engage with consumers and users of the products developed, and continually enhance workflows and processes to accelerate the translation of ideas. 

“Across all fields of science and engineering, addressing grand challenges requires access to advanced technologies, sophisticated instrumentation and workflows, but not every researcher at every institution can access those critical capabilities,” said

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The Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, a global network of radio telescopes funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and international partners, has achieved the highest resolution radio observations of astronomical objects ever obtained. 

For this experiment, the researchers detected radio waves from distant galaxies at a wavelength of 0.87 mm, a substantial improvement from the 1.3 mm wavelength observations the collaboration previously used to image supermassive black holes in two galaxies. The results were published in The Astronomical Journal.

Although the researchers did not image a black hole in this experiment, they estimate that the new method will enable future images of black holes to be 50% more detailed than before, producing more information about the nature of the enigmatic cosmic objects. 

“This is a critically important technical advance, demonstrating an observational capability which will be essential for deeper understanding of the physics behind many astrophysical objects,” says Nigel Sharp, program director in the NSF Division of Physics.

“With such observations, some of the mysteries of black holes will be solved,” says Joe Pesce, program director for the NSF National Radio Astronomy Observatory. 

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