Ten interdisciplinary projects have received funds from Stony Brook University’s AI Small Grant Program.
Selected from a pool of 63 applications, these research initiatives will advance integrated AI innovation and strategic diffusion of AI technology across Stony Brook’s campus, New York State and the world.
Lav Varshney, Della Pietra Infinity Professor and inaugural director of the AI Innovation Institute (AI3), said, “It is important to integrate the advances we make in foundational AI technology with its use in important settings like the treatment of epilepsy and finding early biomarkers for mental health disorders. The selected projects are very much pioneering in this way, sitting at the hard intersection of innovation and diffusion. Some projects are further developing datasets and benchmark tasks that can drive whole ecosystems of research effort towards societally important problems. I’m also super excited by projects that are leveraging AI to drive novel sensing of biological, quantum, and cosmological phenomena and delving into the deep history of mammalian evolution.”
Launched in February 2026, the AI3 Small Grant Program was developed and funded by AI3. The Office for Research and Innovation supported the application process and oversaw the committee that reviewed and selected winning proposals.
The grant sought projects in AI, its applications, and its ecosystems along three distinct tracks. Projects selected for “Innovation in AI” focus on new advances in algorithms, architectures, mathematical foundations, physical foundations or ethical foundations of AI. Those aimed at “Diffusion of AI” conduct research that facilitates the diffusion of AI into an industrial, societal or scholarly sector, largely focused on using AI in novel settings.
Projects in the third category seek to develop “Datasets and Benchmark Tasks” appropriate for advancing AI and for respecting their disciplinary core, whether that’s business, engineering, health sciences, humanities, journalism, marine sciences, physical sciences, social sciences or other fields.
The grant distributed more than $450,000 across the ten projects. AI3 will also connect researchers with graduate consultants and experts at the Stony Brook Libraries to help them better execute their projects.
For details on the selected projects, read the full story on the AI3 website.
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