A New Book Outlines The AI Technologies Fueling Revolutionary Scientific Research

Technologies based on artificial intelligence (AI) can hasten the development of new hardware and software systems, enable the design and optimisation of complex instruments, and automate the mass production of data resources that are FAIR —findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.

Alok Choudhary, a mechanical engineering professor at Northwestern University, is one of the co-editors of a new book titled Artificial Intelligence for Science: A Deep Learning Revolution (World Scientific Publishing Company, 2023) that describes the AI, machine learning (ML), and deep neural network technologies that are enabling ground-breaking scientific advancements.

Numerous sources, including supercomputer simulations, satellites, gene sequencers, X-ray synchrotrons, and electron microscopes, as well as cutting-edge experimental setups like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, provide enormous datasets. Contributions from eminent scientists who explore the difficulties and potential benefits of utilising AI to glean scientifically significant insights from the ever-growing mountains of data are included in Artificial Intelligence for Science.

The handbook describes AI-enabled advancements in many scientific domains, including agricultural and environmental science, astronomy and cosmology, climate science, energy and sustainability, health and medicine, life sciences, materials science and engineering, and particle physics. It is intended for professionals, researchers, and students in all fields of science and engineering.

Geoffrey Fox, a computer science professor at the University of Virginia and a participant in the Biocomplexity Institute and Initiative, and Tony Hey, the chief data scientist at the Science and Technology Facilities Council Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, the United Kingdom, are the other co-editors of Artificial Intelligence for Science.

At the McCormick School of Engineering, Choudhary serves as the Henry and Isabelle Dever Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and (by invitation only), Computer Science. At Northwestern University, he oversees the Centre for Ultra-scale Computing and Information Security.

Research by Choudhary focuses on big data science, supercomputing, scalable data mining, and the use of ML and AI in industries like business, health, and the physical sciences. He is the company’s creator, chairman, and chief scientist. In 2020, MediaOcean purchased 4C Insights, a provider of data science tools.

Choudhary sat on the Secretary of Energy’s Artificial Intelligence Advisory Board. In addition to advising more than 40 PhD students, he has written more than 450 papers for various publications and international conferences and given more than 100 invited lectures at conferences, businesses, and universities. Choudhary has won a number of significant honours, including the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation, the IEEE Engineering Foundation Award, the IBM Faculty Award, and the Intel Research Council Award. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the IEEE.