Schmidt Futures commits $148 million to AI postdoctoral research
Schmidt Futures—founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy—has announced a $148 million initiative to fund postdoctoral research in artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate interdisciplinary innovation across a wide range of science-related fields.
The Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship program will fund research that leverages AI to create breakthroughs in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields—from developing new drugs to fight disease, to detecting some of the faintest objects in the solar system, to helping produce and store energy more efficiently. Each year for the next six years, partner universities will each select a new cohort of up to 20 fellows, providing them with advanced AI training, funded research support, and professional development opportunities to shape research at their own institutions and help build a global network of AI-trained scientists.
The program will initially support 160 postdoctoral fellows across nine universities in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Singapore. The first cohort of partner universities includes the University of Toronto, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), National University of Singapore, the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, Cornell University, the University of California San Diego, the University of Chicago, and the University of Michigan. The fellowship initiative expands Schmidt Futures portfolio of AI programs including AI2050, a recently announced five-year, $125 million research funding commitment.
“AI is already revolutionary—but it is not yet as accessible, equitable, or interdisciplinary as it needs to be,” said Wendy Schmidt. “By supporting postdoctoral candidates around the world in fields beyond computer science, we hope to create a community that can develop and improve this technology and find novel ways to apply it in solving some of the world’s most pressing problems.”
(Photo credit: Getty Images/Anna Bliokh)
