The new center directors (L-R) Acuña, Gurari, and Ayanzadeh.

Computer science researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder are launching three new interdisciplinary centers to advance artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

The effort will bring together faculty and students from across disciplines to advance two fields that are rapidly growing nationally and worldwide.

“Our faculty are already doing strong work in quantum computing, AI, and the study of how knowledge is produced, but the biggest problems in these areas are larger than any one lab,” said Dan Larremore, associate chair for research in the Department of Computer Science. “These centers give faculty the structure and charge to take on big problems together, and to compete for ambitious, collaborative grants.” 

Each center has a unique mission:

• Center for AI in Knowledge Institutions (AIKI) – To improve and measure the effectiveness of artificial intelligence in universities, scientific journal publishers, news outlets, healthcare systems, in arts and culture, and on social media platforms.
• Artificial Intelligence for Science, Computing, Engineering and New Technologies (ASCENT) Center – To expand AI’s benefit to society by transforming how it is built, with researchers across the AI stack working together from the start.
•  Center for Quantum Computing (CQC) – To establish CU Boulder as a leader in quantum computing by advancing research from systems and architecture, to algorithms and theory, quantum AI/ML, and real-world applications.

Daniel Acuña, an associate professor and director of AIKI, said knowledge institutions and artificial intelligence are facing unusual two-way interactions ripe for important study.

“These organizations shape much of what the public knows,” Acuña said. “Their content now also trains the artificial intelligence that writes, reviews, and shares that knowledge. How does AI incorporate that information into its internal representations? At the same time, how do these institutions use AI's outputs and decisions to change themselves? We want to understand that interaction and provide results for society.”

Where AIKI is focused on understanding the impacts of artificial intelligence, ASCENT aims to improve the development of AI systems at their core, according to Associate Professor Danna Gurari, the center’s director.

“AI is built across interconnected layers—from the architectures, training, data, and evaluation to the hardware infrastructure and physical systems on which AI is deployed. CU Boulder already has exceptional people spanning that landscape. ASCENT will connect them, in turn inspiring new research directions, catalyzing collaborations, and enabling ambitious, multi-year, cross-stack efforts beyond the reach of any single lab,” Gurari said.

The third center will focus on expanding CU Boulder’s capabilities in quantum computing. Center director Ramin Ayanzadeh said CQC will fill an important gap in Boulder’s broader quantum ecosystem by strengthening its computing dimension.

“Boulder already has extraordinary strengths in quantum physics and hardware, and we also have a growing group of faculty working across different areas of quantum computing. With CQC, we want to build on that foundation and make CU Boulder a major hub for the computing side of quantum. We have a unique opportunity here with leading federal laboratories nearby and a rapidly growing regional quantum industry. Ultimately, we want CU Boulder to be at the forefront of quantum computing,” Ayanzadeh said.

The centers draw on partnerships within CU Boulder and collaborations across CU and with universities, federal laboratories, and industry. Those ties include CUbit and the CU Anschutz Medical Campus; Colorado School of Mines and Colorado State University; the National Institute of Standards and Technology and Sandia National Laboratories; and Google, NVIDIA, Apple, Infleqtion, Quantinuum, and D-Wave.

The Department of Computer Science is providing seed funding to start the centers. Each one will then work to attract large-scale research funding awards from federal agencies, ranging from the National Institutes of Health, to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the National Science Foundation.

“We’re recalibrating what we think is possible, dreaming much bigger and pursuing more ambitious goals than any one of us could imagine or tackle alone,” Gurari said. “These centers will make our collective capability more visible, demonstrating to  funders that we have the expertise,  infrastructure, and community needed to tackle society’s larger-scale challenges.”