Virtual Workshop 2026 - AI Meets CI: Intelligent Infrastructure for Major and Midscale Facilities materials
The NSF CI Compass virtual workshop: AI Meets CI: Intelligent Infrastructure for Major & Midscale Facilities was originally hosted on January 12, 13, and 14, 2026.
These virtual workshop days were half days, and featured themes to host speakers, presentations, and discussions surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) and cyberinfrastructure (CI) within the data lifecycle in facilities, cloud computing, and about societal and human intersections with AI.
This event has concluded. Please see below for artifacts from the Virtual Workshop.
Pre-Workshop Materials
A webinar series and an NSF CI Compass Tech Notes, serving as a practical AI primer, have been created in preparation for this workshop by Charles Vardeman, Knowledge Engineering and AI Expert, NSF CI Compass. Find the full webinar series and information here, and more information about the Tech Notes here.
Webinar Series:
Tech Notes:
The Workshop Agenda and Available Materials:
|
Monday, January 12 |
Session Title Day 1: MF experience with AI |
Speaker(s) |
| 9 a.m. PT / Noon ET |
Workshop Introduction |
Ewa Deelman, Director, NSF CI Compass |
| 9:10 a.m. PT / 12:10 p.m. ET |
Keynote: Transforming Science and Engineering Research through an Integrated Cyberinfrastructure Ecosystem: An update from the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure |
Katie Antypas, Senior Advisor of Cyberinfrastructure, U.S. National Science Foundation's Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure |
| 9:30 a.m. PT / 12:30 p.m. ET |
Panel I: Adoption of AI in Major and Mid-scale Facilities (MFs)
|
Benedikt Riedel (NSF IceCube), Leanne Guy (Rubin/LSST), Javier Duarte (CMS), Krishna Kumar (TACC) Moderated by Anirban Mandal, Associate Director, NSF CI Compass |
| 10:45 a.m. PT / 1:45 p.m. ET |
Panel II: Making MF data AI-ready
|
David Butcher (NSF MagLab), Ted Habermann (Metadata Game Changers), Jeffrey Glatstein (NSF OOI/WHOI), Eric Sokol (NSF NEON) Moderated by Jarek Nabrzyski, Co-PI, NSF CI Compass |
|
Noon PT / |
Day 1 Workshop Closing Remarks | |
| Tuesday, January 13 |
Day 2: AI Tools for MF Data Lifecycle |
|
| 9 a.m. PT / Noon ET |
Day 2 Introduction: AI for the Data Lifecycle (DLC) |
Chuck Vardeman (NSF CI Compass) |
| 9:20 a.m. PT / 12:20 p.m. ET |
Speaker: Artificial intelligence, LLMs, and Agents for science at the Edge, Pete Beckman, professor, Northwestern University |
Pete Beckman (Northwestern) |
| 9:40 a.m. PT / 12:40 p.m. ET |
Panel III: AI in Practice AI
|
Kyle Chard (Globus), Raj Mishra (WHOI), Cogan Shimizu (Wright State), and Dean Wampler (IBM) Moderated by Charles Vardeman, Knowledge Engineering and AI Expert, NSF CI Compass |
| 10:55 a.m. PT / 1:55 p.m. ET |
Talk: Exploring scientific security considerations in the age of AI, Drew Paine, lead experience researcher, Scientific Data Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and member of Trusted CI team leading the Secure Use of AI project; and Dhwanit Pandya, master's student in Computer Science at Indiana University, Student Fellow at the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research |
Drew Paine (TrustedCI), Dhwanit Pandya (Indiana University) |
| 11:15 a.m. PT / 2:15 p.m. ET |
Lightning Talks
|
Werner Sun (CHESS), Bonnie Hurwitz (NC State Bioinformatics Research Center), Daniel Howard (NSF NCAR), Jeannette Jackson (UM/Research Data Ecosystem), Julio Ibarra (FIU/AmLight International), Mark Holl (CXFEL) |
| 11:55 a.m. PT / 2:55 p.m. ET |
Day 2 Workshop Closing Remarks | |
| Wednesday, January 14 |
Day 3: AI at Large |
|
|
9:00 a.m. PT /
Noon ET |
Welcome and overview of the events of the day
|
Angela Murillo, Co-PI and CI Compass Student Fellowship Director, NSF CI Compass, & Kerk Kee, Senior Personnel, NSF CI Compass
|
|
9:15 AM PT /
12:15 p.m. ET
|
Interactive session on 1) Adopter Categories, 2) Innovation Attributes, and 3) Trust.
This will include a brief introduction to each topic, followed by a group discussion. Closing group discussion on “ I would use AI today, if...” |
Angela Murillo, Co-PI and CI Compass Student Fellowship Director, NSF CI Compass, & Kerk Kee, Senior Personnel, NSF CI Compass |
| 9:50 a.m. PT / 12:50 p.m. ET |
Talk I: Considerations for Testing and Evaluation of AI Systems, Emily Castleton, statistician, Los Alamos National Laboratory |
Emily Casleton (Los Alamos National Labs) |
| 10:10 a.m. PT / 1:10 p.m. ET |
Talk II: Building the Human-AI Scientific Discovery Ecosystem: Agentic Workflows and Trustworthy Human-Agent Teaming for Next-Generation Research Infrastructure, Svitlana Volkova, Chief of AI, Aptima Inc. |
Svitlana Volkova (Aptima) |
| 10:30 a.m. PT / 1:30 p.m. ET |
Talk III: NOAA's AI Transformation, Rob Redmon, Senior Scientist, Director of NOAA Center for Artificial Intelligence, at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information |
Rob Redmon (NOAA Center for AI Director) |
| 10:50 a.m. PT / 1:50 p.m. ET |
Discussion |
|
| 10:55 a.m. PT / 1:55 p.m. ET |
Talk IV: AI Foundation Models for Science, Rahul Ramachandran, Senior Research Scientist, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center |
Rahul Ramachandran (NASA) |
| 11:15 a.m. PT / 2:15 p.m. ET |
Talk V: Harnessing AI to accelerate rational vaccine design, Gordon Broderick, Principal Scientist, Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO), University of Saskatchewan |
Gordon Broderick (VIDO, University of Saskatchewan) |
| 11:35 a.m. PT / 2:35 p.m. ET |
Talk VI: Navigating the Heterogeneous Computing Landscape: Optimization Strategies for Modern AI Workloads, Prasanna Balaprakash, Co-founder and CEO of PrimaLabs |
Prasanna Balaprakash (PrimaLabs) |
| 11:55 a.m. PT / 2:55 p.m. ET |
Concluding Remarks |
Ewa Deelman, Director, NSF CI Compass |
| 12 p.m. PT / 3 p.m. ET |
Close of Workshop |
This project is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure in the Directorate for Computer Information Science under Grant #2127548.