Collaborative Research: CyberTraining: Implementation: Small: Upskilling Future Workforce for Agentic Cyberinfrastructure-Enabled Manufacturing Ecosystem

The “Agentic Cyberinfrastructure-Enabled Manufacturing Ecosystem (ACEME)” CyberTraining program addresses the critical national need to bridge the widening skills gap between advanced Cyberinfrastructure (CI) and the rapidly evolving manufacturing sector. There is an urgent demand for a bilingual workforce proficient in both rigorous manufacturing physics and the architecture of autonomous, multi-agent AI systems. ACEME proposes a transformative educational pathway to upskill 54 participants over three years, targeting undergraduate and graduate students in engineering and computer science who currently lack access to Agentic CI tools. The project’s short-term goal is to equip these domain scientists with specialized skills such as autonomous research workflows and physics-informed AI. Its long-term goal is to cultivate a new generation of research leaders capable of designing self-driving laboratories and scalable Agentic CIenabled manufacturing systems. The program features a comprehensive curriculum that integrates emerging tools with competitive hands-on learning in a unique Agent Arena, a gamified cyber-physical testbed where participants deploy agents to solve real-world manufacturing challenges. ACEME will transform participants from passive black-box AI users into active architects of manufacturing ecosystems. 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.