Serving as a bridge for academia, industry and public-sector groups to partner on artificial intelligence innovation, NVIDIA is launching its inaugural AI Tech Community in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Collaborations with Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, as well as startups, enterprises and organizations based in the “city of bridges,” are part of the new NVIDIA AI Tech Community initiative, announced today during the NVIDIA AI Summit in Washington, D.C.

The initiative aims to supercharge public-private partnerships across communities rich with potential for enabling technological transformation using AI.

Two NVIDIA joint technology centers will be established in Pittsburgh to tap into expertise in the region.

NVIDIA’s Joint Center with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) for Robotics, Autonomy and AI will equip higher-education faculty, students and researchers with the latest technologies and boost innovation in the fields of AI and robotics.

NVIDIA’s Joint Center with the University of Pittsburgh for AI and Intelligent Systems will focus on computational opportunities across the health sciences, including applications of AI in clinical medicine and biomanufacturing.

CMU — the nation’s No. 1 AI university according to the U.S. News & World Report — has pioneered work in autonomous vehicles and natural language processing.

CMU’s Robotics Institute, the world’s largest university-affiliated robotics research group, brings a diverse group of more than a thousand faculty, staff, students, post-doctoral fellows and visitors together to solve humanity’s toughest challenges through robotics.

The University of Pittsburgh — designated as an R1 research university at the forefront of innovation — is ranked No. 6 among U.S. universities in research funding from the National Institutes of Health, topping more than $1 billion in research expenditures in fiscal year 2022 and ranking No. 14 among U.S. universities granted utility patents.

The university has a long history of learning-technology innovations that are interdisciplinary and conducted within research-practice partnerships. By prioritizing inclusivity and practical experience without technical barriers, Pitt is leading the way in democratizing AI education in healthcare and medicine.

By working with these universities, NVIDIA aims to accelerate the innovation, commercialization and operationalization of a technical community for physical AI, robotics, autonomous systems and AI across the nation — and the globe.

These centers will tap into NVIDIA’s full-stack AI platform and accelerated computing expertise to gear up tomorrow’s technology leaders for next-generation innovation.

Establishing the Centers for AI Development 

Generative AI and accelerated computing are transforming workflows across use cases. Three key AI platforms comprise the engine behind this transformation: NVIDIA DGX for AI training, NVIDIA Omniverse for simulation and NVIDIA Jetson for edge computing.

Through the new centers and public-sector-sponsored research opportunities, NVIDIA will provide CMU and Pitt with access to these and more of the company’s latest AI software and frameworks — such as NVIDIA Isaac Lab for robot learning, NVIDIA Isaac Sim for designing and testing robots, NVIDIA NeMo for custom generative AI and NVIDIA NIM microservices, available through the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform.

Advanced NVIDIA technological support can help accelerate the research groups’ workflows and enhance the scalability and resiliency of their AI applications.

In addition, the universities will have access to certain generative AI, data science and accelerated computing resources through the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute, which provides training to meet diverse learning needs and upskill students and developers in AI.

“Pairing Carnegie Mellon University’s existing deep expertise and resources in AI and robotics with NVIDIA’s cutting-edge platform, software and tools has tremendous potential to power Pittsburgh’s already vibrant innovation ecosystem,” said Theresa Mayer, vice president for research at CMU. “This unique collaboration will accelerate innovation, commercialization and operationalization of robotics and autonomy, advancing the best impacts of AI on society.”

“Pitt has a long history and extraordinary research strengths in life sciences and learning sciences,” said Rob A. Rutenbar, senior vice chancellor for research at the University of Pittsburgh. “By focusing on computational and AI opportunities across these ‘meds and eds’ areas, we plan to leverage our collaboration with NVIDIA to explore new ways to connect these breakthroughs to improved health and education outcomes for everybody.”

Fostering Cross-Industry Collaboration

As part of the AI Tech Community initiative, NVIDIA is also increasing its engagement with Pittsburgh-based members of the NVIDIA Inception program for cutting-edge AI startups and the NVIDIA Connect program for software development companies and service providers.

For example, Inception member Lovelace AI is developing AI solutions using NVIDIA accelerated computing and CUDA to enhance the analysis of kinetic data, providing predictive analytics and actionable insights for national security customers.

Skild AI, a startup founded by two Carnegie Mellon professors, is developing a scalable robotics foundation model, called Skild Brain, that can easily adapt across hardware and tasks.

Skild AI is exploring NVIDIA Isaac Lab, a unified, modular framework for robot learning built on the NVIDIA Isaac Sim reference application for designing, simulating and training AI-based robots.

NVIDIA is also engaging with Pittsburgh’s broader robotics ecosystem through its collaborations with the Pittsburgh Robotics Network — which speeds the commercialization of robotics, AI and other advanced technologies — and technology accelerators like AlphaLab and the Robotics Factory at Innovation Works, which supports startups based in the city that are focused on AI, robotics and autonomy.

And through its Deep Learning Institute, which has trained more than 650,000 people, NVIDIA is committed to furthering AI workforce development worldwide.

Learn more about how NVIDIA is propelling the next era of computing in higher education and research, including at the NVIDIA AI Summit, running through Oct. 9. NVIDIA Vice President of Developer Programs Greg Estes will discuss scaling AI skills and economic growth through public-private collaboration.

Featured image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.