Past Event: Texas Science Festival & CosmicAI

AI Among the Stars: How Machines Help Us Explore the Universe

1) Arya Farahi,Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics and Data Sciences, UT Austin 2) Niall Gaffney, Director of Computing, Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) 3) Stella Offner, Professor, Department of Astronomy, UT Austin 4) Josh Taylor, Research Associate, UT Austin Oden Institute and CosmicAI Institute,

Abstract

The recent revolution in artificial intelligence (AI), together with technical advances in telescopes and computing, have opened new frontiers for astronomy data processing and analysis. Meanwhile, open, rich, massive datasets are the lifeblood of AI innovation. In the current big-data era of astronomy, new facilities like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory are generating a firehose of data. Planned facility upgrades, such as the next-generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) and Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), will routinely yield datasets containing 1 trillion voxels, exceeding current processing capacity and requiring new AI developments. Panelists will discuss: How AI tools will interact with current and forthcoming surveys to accelerate astronomy research workflows; Highlight recent AI applications for analysis of big datasets; Discuss the activities of the NSF-Simons AI Institute for Cosmic Origins (CosmicAI), an institute at UT Austin aiming to develop transformative AI approaches to tackle astronomy problems.