Conference: Artificial Intelligence Summer School for Computer Science and Operations Research Education; College Park, Maryland; 19-24 May 2024

This grant provides funding to support the convening of Artificial Intelligence Summer School for Computer Science and Operations Research Education; College Park, Maryland; 19-24 May 2024. A summer school for students and researchers from the fields of operations research (OR) and computer science (CS) to assist in bridging the gap between the OR and CS perspectives on advancing artificial intelligence (AI) research. Optimization methods are at the core of many techniques that support AI. Generally speaking, the OR community, where optimization methods developed from foundational operational challenges, begins from a model-based perspective, while the CS community, responding to the rise in availability of massive data sets, begins from a computational, data-driven perspective. Both perspectives have much to teach and learn from each other, but to date, they have evolved separately. The Summer School is intended to highlight both perspectives and to guide graduate students in understanding the value of both perspectives as they advance AI research. This grant provides support for early-phase PhD students from across the US to attend a week-long summer school organized by academic researchers in the field of AI from both OR and CS communities. The topics for the summer school will focus on reinforcement learning and fairness/equity, with tutorial material developed especially for the occasion jointly by teams of OR and CS researchers. The intent is to broaden the knowledge and awareness of the students to both fields and to seed future research at the interface of both fields. The organizers will advertise the summer school widely and will target equal attendance across both fields. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.