As a founding team member focused on public outreach, I am privileged to facilitate groundbreaking projects and collaborations that explore the intersections of fine and applied arts, science, and artificial intelligence. The SkAI Institute is at the forefront of uniting multidisciplinary researchers to develop innovative and trustworthy AI tools for astronomy. These tools will empower us to make transformative discoveries by analyzing extensive astronomical datasets and enhancing physics-based simulations, among other initiatives.
Under the leadership of Principal Investigator and SkAI Director Dr. Vicky Kalogera, the institute is generously funded by the Simons Foundation and a prestigious $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
Our core partners include Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (my home institution), and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. We are also collaborating with esteemed organizations such as Argonne National Laboratory, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of Illinois Chicago, the Adler Planetarium, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.