New York’s first-in-the-nation Empire AI Consortium will commence research this fall, just six months after it was included in the Fiscal Year 2025 Enacted Budget. The Simons Foundation made a philanthropic contribution of initial computing power and expert staffing, allowing Empire AI to jumpstart its research. Housed at the University at Buffalo, this initial phase of Empire AI represents some of the most robust computing power in the nation. On behalf of the Consortium, the University at Buffalo has also launched a request for proposals to advance the permanent home of the full-scale state-of-the-art artificial intelligence computing center.
Empire AI Consortium members will leverage the initial research capacity, starting this fall, to advance research aimed at addressing major societal challenges for the public good. These efforts will focus on critical areas such as climate change and resilience, health disparities and interventions, accelerating drug discovery, democratizing education for all populations, and tackling global food insecurity and urban poverty.
AI and the high-performance computing offered by Empire AI will play a pivotal role in solving other complex issues, including sustainable energy solutions, cybersecurity threats, advanced healthcare diagnostics, equitable economic development, and optimizing infrastructure for smart cities.
The Governor also announced that Stony Brook University’s Dr. Robert J. Harrison has been appointed as interim executive director to lead the Consortium, while a national search is conducted for the Consortium’s inaugural permanent leader. Professor Robert Harrison is the founding director of the Institute for Advanced Computational Science at Stony Brook University, which was established in 2012 with an endowment from Jim and Marilyn Simons. Through his leadership, the institute achieved international recognition as a hub for AI and computer-enabled multidisciplinary research. His long career at the frontiers of science and high-performance computing has spanned academia and multiple US Department of Energy national laboratories including Brookhaven National Laboratory here in New York, on Long Island, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, current home of the world’s fastest open-science computer.
Governor Hochul also announced an Empire AI board of directors that will include representatives from the State and from the Consortium higher education partners — the City University of New York, Cornell University, Columbia University, New York University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the State University of New York.
Additionally, the Empire AI Consortium has been formally incorporated as a New York non-profit corporation and has taken critical steps to ensure strong governance and accountability, including adopting bylaws and key policies. The computing capacity provided by the Simons Foundation will provide researchers in the Consortium the opportunity to begin advanced research immediately while the larger facility is being built.
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