Scientists from Australia and USA Team Up to Solve Global Issues
Under a multi-million dollar partnership, the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the United States and CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, are tackling issues like climate change, clean energy and sustainability, building low emissions technologies, and creating ethical artificial intelligence.
The freshly formed cooperation between the two top scientific organizations aims to hasten collaborative research and projects between Australia and the United States in areas of shared importance.
According to CSIRO Chief Executive Larry Marshall, in just a year, the two top science organizations have already opened up a number of opportunities in both countries. This month, they announced a $100 million Global Centers initiative and partnered to develop ethical and responsible artificial intelligence (AI) and sustainable materials to address global challenges.
Dr. Marshall stated that the CSIRO and the NSF, as national science bodies, were collaborating to "create international bridges for national gain, boosting our science and innovation to better lives throughout the world."
"As the world rushes to adopt new applications for technologies like AI, global cooperation will be necessary to promote responsible and ethical uses that take advantage of all the potential of technical advancements and foster sustainable competitive advantages. In addition to our own research, CSIRO is dedicated to responsible and ethical AI through catalyzing new opportunities across the ecosystem, he added. "CSIRO is happy to stand side-by-side with the NSF," he said.
The recipients of the responsible and ethical AI awards totaling US$1.8 million from NSF and AUD$2.3 million from CSIRO, with the projects aligned to CSIRO's Missions, were today revealed as being three Australia-US teams.
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University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and UNSW Sydney Fair Sequential Collective Decision-Making.
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Arizona State University, George Mason University, UNSW Sydney, and RMIT University. Understanding Bias in AI Models for the Prediction of Infectious Disease Transmission.
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UCLA, The University of Texas at Austin, University of Technology Sydney, and The University of Melbourne are partners in the project Graph Representation Learning for Fair Teaming in Crisis Response.
In meeting with researchers in Australia, NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan stated that the CSIRO-NSF relationship was already having an early impact.
Dr. Panchanathan stated, "Through this collaboration, we're building a platform to mobilize the resources and capabilities of the research communities across the United States and Australia to address issues that are a priority for both our countries as well as the rest of the world, like climate resilience and unbiased AI-powered technologies.
"With this collaboration comes the possibility to unleash our'missing millions'," he remarked, referring to the untapped resource of people who have not yet been included in the STEM workforce and who can contribute a variety of viewpoints and ideas.
This month, CSIRO became an anchor partner in the NSF Global Centres in Climate Change and Clean Energy, which also include the UK's UK Research and Innovation, Canada's Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and Australia (CSIRO). As the national science agency, CSIRO has a crucial part to play in uniting and bolstering the Australian innovation ecosystem and ensuring that we are prepared to tackle our greatest problems in the future. This entails utilizing global networks and creating chances for industry, governmental, and scientific organizations to collaborate on research.