CDS Assistant Professor Siddharth Mishra-Sharma Leads BU in Joining NSF Institute for Artificial Intelligence
Photo by Cydney Scott
Boston University is now a core member of the National Science Foundation (NSF) AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI), one of NSF’s network of National AI Research Institutes each focused on AI for a specific scientific domain. BU’s involvement will be headed up by CDS Assistant Professor Siddharth Mishra-Sharma, who was a member of the inaugural group of IAIFI Fellows. CDS—a post-disciplinary academic unit that complements traditional disciplinary units, creating the conditions for convergent research—is a natural home for scholars like Mishra-Sharma with one foot in machine learning and AI and another foot in science.
“Sidd stands at the vanguard of a new era where Artificial Intelligence is not merely a post-processing tool but foundational to the scientific method itself,” said Azer Bestavros, William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor and Associate Provost for Computing & Data Sciences. “His work in ‘AI for Science’ reimagines computing and data science architectures to unlock mysteries across physics, chemistry, biology, and astronomy—enabling us to "see" the invisible, from dark matter to complex molecular systems. What sets Sidd apart is his methodological elegance: rather than simply applying existing ML tools to scientific data, he identifies the core computational limitations of a discipline and invents the necessary AI architectures to overcome them. He is not just using AI to do science; he is evolving AI through science.”