Columbia University Receives $20M Grant to Establish AI, Neuroscience Institute

Columbia University has been awarded $20 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to establish and lead the AI Institute for ARtificial and Natural Intelligence (ARNI), and interdisciplinary center tasked with connecting major advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and neuroscience. 

The press release indicates that currently, recent breakthroughs in AI, cognitive science, and neuroscience have only impacted each other superficially through advances in data science and neural activity, circuitry, and learning. ARNI is designed to accelerate progress in these fields and broaden their impacts on research and society in the coming decade. 

By bridging gaps between biological and artificial networks, this work aims to support various applications in the industrial and healthcare sectors, in addition to societal solutions, such as improved social safety nets and technologies to help generate hypotheses about brain function. 

“Thanks to new AI algorithms, our knowledge of neuroscience and cognitive science expands every day,” said Shih-Fu Chang, PhD, dean of Columbia Engineering, in the press release. “And with our growing knowledge of the brain and cognitive science, we have better AI algorithms, making progress on important applications that impact our world.” 

“ARNI aims to overcome current limitations in AI while also introducing modern AI into neuroscience, foundational machine learning, and cognitive science,” Chang explained. “Engineers are pivotal for applying scientific insights to real-world problems, and we look forward to the groundbreaking discoveries that will come from this exciting large-scale collaboration. We are grateful to the National Science Foundation for helping us create this modern cross-disciplinary arsenal, converging to generate new insights and advance this very important, emerging field.” 

The center’s efforts will also focus heavily on fair and robust machine learning tools, which its principal investigators (PIs) posit is crucial if these new tools are to improve society. 

“A key characteristic of our approach is a focus on developing interpretable models, often based on causal approaches, that are cognitively grounded, given our research on the brain,” said Richard Zemel, PhD, director and PI at ARNI, and the Trianthe Dakolias Professor of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia Engineering. “This will lead to the development of trustworthy systems that can explain their reasoning to end users in terms they understand. This is critical in high-stakes applications such as healthcare, law, and in support of vulnerable populations.” 

ARNI will also provide research and educational opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, in addition to postdoctoral trainees, at the intersection of AI, cognitive science, and neuroscience, the press release notes.  

This is Columbia University’s latest foray into applying AI and other approaches to advance neuroscience research. 

Last month, Columbia launched the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Center for Precision Psychiatry & Mental Health, the work of which focuses on addressing stigma and discrimination associated with mental healthcare while alleviating the toll of mental illness through research in psychiatric genomics, stem cell biology, neuroscience, and AI.