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UB’s new Department of AI and Society (AIS), which will concentrate on harnessing AI for the public good, was the main focus of Monday’s UB Council meeting, the body’s last meeting of the academic year.

Kemper Lewis, dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Robin Schulze, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, provided council members with an update on the new department, a collaboration between SEAS and CAS that will launch in the fall.

AIS, which comes out of the SUNY STRIVE (Strategic Research Investment) task force on artificial intelligence, advances UB’s position as a national leader in AI, Lewis told council members. It will leverage significant investments from New York State and the National Science Foundation, as well as support new degree programs that will distinguish UB and attract students and faculty to campus.

Lewis noted AIS has had overwhelming support at UB, receiving approval from 83% of the faculty in both SEAS and CAS, and overwhelming approval by the Faculty Senate in a vote of 53-6-2.

SUNY and New York State have committed $5 million to support the new department, and the Provost’s Office will provide recurring funds, Lewis said, adding that initial space for the department is being identified but eventually the unit will be housed in a new AI and Society Shared Research Building on the North Campus. Atri Rudra, the Katherine Johnson Chair in Artificial Intelligence and a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, will serve as inaugural chair; an associate chair will be named from among faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences.

SUNY funding will support the expected hiring of 10 new faculty members in the next two years, Lewis said, and current UB faculty members can join the department either by shifting their full appointments to the department, or transitioning to a joint appointment, or becoming a department affiliate. In addition, an open search is being conducted for the department’s first staff member, a director of administration.

Schulze said the new AIS department will oversee “unique degree programs,” starting with undergraduate “AIX” degrees. AIS will provide the core AI curricula, with other departments at UB contributing their relevant expertise — the “X” to the AI core.

Schulze says CAS departments already have proposed a number of new AIX degree programs, all of which have been approved by SUNY and are currently awaiting approval by the state education department. Among them: AI and Geospatial Analytics, Geography; AI and Policy Analysis, Political Science; AI and Logic and Ontology, Philosophy; AI and Language Technology, Linguistics; AI and Responsible Communication, Communication; AI and Quantitative Economics, Economics; and AI and Intercultural Competence, Linguistics and Romance Languages and Literatures.

Schulze noted that plans are underway to develop master’s and doctoral programs as well.

In other business, the council approved several naming resolutions:

• The Evans Family Scholarship in honor of Ronald P. Evans, who received a BS in pharmacy from UB in 1969.
• The Dr. Margaret Ann Tubbert Farrington Fund for Biological Sciences in honor of the late Margaret Ann Tubbert Farrington, MA ’72 and PhD ’73, to support scholarships for students studying biological sciences, as well as the Department of Biological Sciences.
• The Murchie Shore Data Theater in Jacobs Management Center to support student work in data visualizations and simulations.
• The Mrs. Elizabeth A. Guelcher Art Education, Medical Humanities, and Community Room in the UB Anderson Gallery. The gift from Robert T. Guelcher, MD ’60, honors his late wife, Elizabeth “Betsy” A. Guelcher “by supporting her passion for the arts and health care for the benefit of humanity.”