Alejandro Suarez: We will get started in just a moment.
Alejandro Suarez: See that our
Alejandro Suarez: attendees are leveling off here.
Alejandro Suarez: Alright, I think we are ready to go here. So thank you. Everyone for joining us at the National AI Research Resource pilot classroom partner showcase so my name is Alejandro Suarez.
Alejandro Suarez: I'm here with my colleague Jenny Lee from the office of Advanced cyber infrastructure, and our colleague, Ellen Zagura, Division Director of the Division of Computer Network Systems, also within National Science Foundation. And we're going to talk to you a little bit about the near pilot the active opportunities that are available for researchers. And
Alejandro Suarez: of course, as the title leads you to the classroom and education opportunities that are available at Nsf and connected to the nair pilot from which you will hear to lightning talks from some education partners specific to the neare pilot.
Alejandro Suarez: So as a reminder, this webinar will be recorded, and a recording of this webinar will be available via the link to which you signed up to the webinar.
Alejandro Suarez: So, as I noted our agenda, we'll start with an overview of the near pilot. We'll talk a little bit about what what it actually consists of the active opportunities that you can apply to today and the resources that are available in the research setting and then in the education setting which will lead to my colleague Ellen, talking about the education opportunities that are available in Nsf.
Alejandro Suarez: Before we will hand it over to our colleagues at the prototype National Research Platform and vocarium, who will talk a little bit about their partner contributed resources that are available via the near pilot for applications. We'll finish off with our QA. Via zoom. So at any time you are welcome to submit a question using the QA feature in zoom. We'll try to get to as many of them as we can as time permits. At the end of our presentations.
Alejandro Suarez: So what is the national AI research resource?
Alejandro Suarez: Well, the vision for the ner? Nair r, is to have a widely accessible national research infrastructure that can advance AI R&D and innovation by empowering a diverse set of users. And this is done by providing access to high performance computing resources, access to high quality data sets catalogs of test beds, education, materials and training opportunities.
Alejandro Suarez: and those are all to further the goals of spurring innovation and increasing the diversity of talent within the AI space
Alejandro Suarez: to ensure that the capacity for AI R&D remains competitive on the world stage, and to advance the trustworthiness and robustness of AI models. You can all often call this re the responsible AI models as well.
Alejandro Suarez: So this is what the full mayor would be looking to accomplish.
Alejandro Suarez: and the vision for the the full ner was discussed in a White House, mandated Taskforce. Report that you can see in purple on the left here this task force report was released in January of last year, and it had a bold vision for a large scale. Multi 1 billion dollar AI research resource activity for the for the nation.
Alejandro Suarez: Right now what we are working on is a pilot of that narr infrastructure. So in the White House executive order that was released at the end of October, Nsf. With partner agencies that I'll go into in a little bit. We're mandated to launch a pilot of the Nair which have specific goals to demonstrate the value and impact of this narr concept
Alejandro Suarez: to support the transformative AI research that we can among broad communities within existing resources and to gain experience that can help advance, and
Alejandro Suarez: guide of and refine the full narrow design. So we should note that the availability of resources that we have right now are those that are contributed in kind from our partners or existing resources that we have available. We do not yet have a fully appropriated ner at this time. So we're seeing what we can do with the pilot.
Alejandro Suarez: So even though we're at a pilot, stage, researchers and educators can access opportunities today to be able to attain resources, to advance their education and research goals. So near pilot.org is the primary portal to interface with the near pilot and see what opportunities are available. You can see a
Alejandro Suarez: list of opportunities for researchers as well as classroom and educators. And then there's some other resources that discuss data sets and some external training opportunities and other activities that will be added as the pilot progresses
Alejandro Suarez: so in terms of who is eligible for the ner pilot AI researchers.
Alejandro Suarez: domain scientists that are applying AI within their research researchers at the research, and students and educators are all eligible to apply for and use the near pilot.
Alejandro Suarez: There is a quite a broad eligibility criteria in terms of affiliation with institutions in terms of who can use pilot resources. The main restriction is that you must be from a Us. Based institution but you can be from an academic institution, a nonprofit Federal agency, or federally funded our R. And D center a State local or tribal agency
Alejandro Suarez: or startup, or a small business that has some sort of federal funding, such as an sbir funding.
Alejandro Suarez: So all of these resources are available to a wide variety of of researchers.
Alejandro Suarez: And this is something that we. We launched the 1st availability of resources in January of this year, and we have already announced some of the types of projects that have been supported by near pilot resources, as of May 6, th
Alejandro Suarez: this follows everything from fundamental computer science projects to molecular biology and other disciplinary work in agriculture, ecology, hydrology. So there's a very wide range of activities that are possible
Alejandro Suarez: via access to the near pilot resources.
Alejandro Suarez: So I noted that there is a large amount of partners associated with the the near pilot. We have a dozen agency partners and over 25 non-governmental partner organizations that are making available different types of resources that researchers and educators can apply to get their research activities or education activities accomplished.
Alejandro Suarez: So I'm gonna go through some examples of the research resources that are available. And then I'm going to hand it over to Ellen, who's gonna talk a little bit about the education focused opportunities at Nsf. Before we go into the education focused resources that the near pilot provides.
Alejandro Suarez: So in terms of the access to resources that researchers may find useful within the near pilot. There's a variety of
Alejandro Suarez: super computing or high performance computing resources that you can apply for access to as part of the the near pilot, and this can advance research or education focused activities so this smattering of different systems has a variety of different types of architectures and service models. Everything from a more traditional batch processing. Based high performance computing environment towards a more cloud
Alejandro Suarez: cloud based environment towards more AI specific chips and architectures and usage modalities, or high memory type systems. All of these types of resources you can apply for and have a justification for why you need that type of resource
Alejandro Suarez: terms of private sector contributions for the researcher space. There's a wide variety of different types of non-government partners that are providing in kind resource contributions, and we had a webinar on the research related resources on May 21.st
Alejandro Suarez: You are welcome to look up the recording of that webinar on the link provided here on the QR code that's available on screen. But this wide variety of resources are still available today through an application mechanism that you can find on their pilot org.
Alejandro Suarez: and when it comes to the resource requests
Alejandro Suarez: some of you may be familiar with the Nsf. Proposal process for Nsf funding these resources are not requested through the Nsf proposal process. It's actually a request for for for allocation of these types of resources. So it's a much simpler type of proposal. There is an FAQ available on their pilot.org, and some instructions on how to go through the request process.
Alejandro Suarez: These resources are available. 1st come first.st Serve as in once requests have been reviewed and allocated that could limit availability of resources for future requests but we are are looking to make these awards and review awards quite quickly compared to more traditional government funding activities in that within about 6 weeks of submission. You may be expected to see a response in terms of the status of your your request.
Alejandro Suarez: So it's a simple way to get in. But we recognize that there's a variety of different types of activities that you may want to accomplish.
Alejandro Suarez: Related to AI research and education. They may not be. They. They may be a bit more substantive than just requesting allocations. And so I'm gonna talk a little bit about a recent year. Colleague letter that we've come out with. And my colleague Ellen, will talk about some of the AI education opportunities that Nsf and our computer science director, Directory, Directoritt has made available.
Alejandro Suarez: So when it comes to
Alejandro Suarez: more larger scale or demonstration project scale activities that you may wish to take on using near pilot resources. We have a dear colleague letter that was recently released, which asks for early types of research activities or supplemental funding requests to existing Nsf projects
Alejandro Suarez: that are separate from our allocation request process. This is looking for teams of AI researchers or domain scientists, cyber infrastructure specialists that are looking to do something quite unique and innovative with the near pilot resources that is above and beyond what could be possible with just an allocation request
Alejandro Suarez: so this activity you can read more about by scanning the QR code on the right or going to the link below these require sending a concept paper a concept outline to us via the Nsf email address that you see at the bottom. But we welcome consideration of such requests. If you're looking at something at that scale
Alejandro Suarez: when it comes to the education activities, though I'm sure this is what you're all here and interested to learn about. I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Alan Zagora, who will talk about some of the AI educator opportunities that Nsf. Has.
Alejandro Suarez: Take it away. Ellen.
Ellen Zegura: Thanks. Al, appreciate it, Ellen Zagora. I'm a a division director of computer and network systems and size, the same part of Nsf that that Al and and Jenny reside in I wanna put the nair
Ellen Zegura: pilot classroom opportunities into a little bit of a bigger context about Nsf's commitments to education. And Nsf's recent efforts in the area of AI education. So Nsf has longstanding commitments to stem education at all levels. Nsf is a research funding agency. But
Ellen Zegura: the education pipeline is an incredibly important part of the research ecosystem. And so a Nsf is long. Recognize that supporting stem education is an important part of the work that we do. In the area of AI. We have, stood up an educate AI initiative. This came into into
Ellen Zegura: reality at the end of last year, and it has a a tall order for its goal the the broad goal is to enable educators to make state of the art inclusive. AI educational experiences available nationwide. That's a that is a tall order, especially when you consider that the learners who who will need to or are interested in learning about AI are really spread across the entire spectrum from K 12
Ellen Zegura: to undergraduate community college and undergraduate experiences into graduate school as well as upscaling and reskilling of workers. So it's a it's a big, it's a big ask it's a big lift to have state of the art educational experiences in AI made available broadly.
Ellen Zegura: the Nair pilot classroom effort is a key component of educate AI and as as Al has been describing, and you'll hear more about from the 2 partner presentations. The Nair pilot classroom is intended to make it possible for more educators to be able to incorporate
Ellen Zegura: incorporate assignments into their courses that would need AI resources. Those may not be available in your own institution. It may be cost prohibitive for you to access them through other means. And so that's a key part of what the near pilot classroom effort is trying to make possible
Ellen Zegura: in the long term. Thinking about education. We know that. It's a lot more than just access to resources. It's also building communities and communities of practice of educators who are in similar situations in terms of the students they're trying to reach in terms of the types of courses that they're that they're working to develop and that
Ellen Zegura: if we can foster communities of practice that will allow everyone to help kind of bootstrap one another. Up into effective classroom practices where we can take the best of what of what's being learned? Across the country at different levels next slide out.
Ellen Zegura: So I wanted to mention a couple of the programs funding programs that Nsf has already in place where proposals that relate to AI education would be welcome.
Ellen Zegura: So one of these is a program that goes by the Iuse Q. Acronym. This is on improving undergraduate stem education, and there's a particular portion of it which has to do with computing and undergraduate education.
Ellen Zegura: You can read the description. I just wanna highlight that this call for proposals asks for re- envisioning how to teach, computing effectively to a broad group of students in a scalable manner and with an emphasis on broadening participation. And in particular, there's a mobilizing track within that solicitation
Ellen Zegura: to to encourage the development of shared national visions around innovation and inclusion which could very well include AI innovation in undergraduate computing education. So that's 1 of the programs we have. If you are an educator at the undergraduate level this program would Po provide support for rethinking curriculum
Ellen Zegura: next slide. Now.
Ellen Zegura: I'll mention a second program. And these are really, these are samples of what Nsf has available that could help support AI education.
Ellen Zegura: And Nsf has a category of of
Ellen Zegura: funded entity called a research coordination network. And at 1st glance you might think that this doesn't have much to do with an education effort. But, in fact, despite the r the R. In the name. The goal of the Rcn. Program is to advance a field or create new directions in research or education.
Ellen Zegura: So the E. Isn't. The E is implicit here. A research coordination network can focus on education, and the intent is support to support investigators who are looking at a new field or creating new directions so that they can communicate and coordinate their work, including their work on educational activities, and that they can do so across boundaries. So that's
Ellen Zegura: sounds a lot like the community of practice concept that I that I mentioned on the previous slide. So
Ellen Zegura: each of these 2 funding programs can complement the Nar pilot classroom resources to try to help educators both access resources, but also have the time and space to think about the implications for curriculum, and then through Rcns to reach out across other
Ellen Zegura: institutions and be able to to share best practices.
Ellen Zegura: Now.
Alejandro Suarez: Thank you so much, Ellen.
Alejandro Suarez: So you've seen a little bit now about some of the the actual Nsf funding opportunities that that are available. We talked about the near pilot research resources that are available. And for our main event we'd like to talk a little bit about the education and educator for educator resources that are available, and these will be done from 2 of our partners
Alejandro Suarez: from the San Diego super computing center, the prototype National Research platform and from our in kind voca vocarium contributor. So right before I go into them, I just need to go through one statement, since we have private partners involved. So this is to allow researchers and educators to learn more about the resources that are available via non near pilot.org and just as a note Nsf does not endorse any specific information in in organizations, the views they may express
Alejandro Suarez: or the project services they offer. But with that I'd like to turn it over to my colleagues at the San Diego Supercomputing center to talk about the prototype national research, platform.
Alejandro Suarez: so frank.
Frank Wurtheim: Slain.
Alejandro Suarez: Rita, take it away!
Frank Wurtheim: Let's go straight to the next slide.
Frank Wurtheim: So we're going to talk a little bit about philosophy
Frank Wurtheim: and then mostly about what is actually on offer next slide.
Frank Wurtheim: The
Frank Wurtheim: ultimately, what we're trying to do here is that the Nrp is designed to democratize access.
Frank Wurtheim: and we want to connect every community, college, every minority of institution and every college and university, including all urban, rural, and tribal institution.
Frank Wurtheim: to world-class and secure research and education, infrastructure with particular attention institutions that have been currently undeserved, and of course stole this from the minds we need, as you can see here as a reference. But this is really what
Frank Wurtheim: but is underlying of what we do next slide.
Frank Wurtheim: This is the current deployment. It is an infrastructure that is literally deployed all over the country. It has 68 institutions at this point and included, and the Nrp. Is a prototype
Frank Wurtheim: to do exactly what this minds we need was aspiring to
Frank Wurtheim: next slide.
Frank Wurtheim: and if you are interested in becoming joining this sent me an email that is separate from the one I think we're offering. This is funded via an an Nsf. Grant, I'll skip this next slide.
Frank Wurtheim: Now let's get into what is actually on offer within the context of the near classroom.
Frank Wurtheim: and what I'm going to talk about is one slide on what's an offer? The resources? And then we'll talk about. How are other people already using this and let me move this this away so that I can actually see my slide.
Frank Wurtheim: The starting point is.
Frank Wurtheim: this is what we're offering is a Jupyter resource for classes.
Frank Wurtheim: And the. In addition to a Jupiter resource for classes as written on the 1st bullet, let me move to the 4th bullet.
Frank Wurtheim: We have a support community interaction through matrix channels. Matrix is is an open source version of slack. I mean, I assume everybody knows what a slack channel is, and matrix channels are basically the same as slack channels.
Frank Wurtheim: And the so, in a way, if you listen to, or the previous speaker, we are trying to create a community that teaches
Frank Wurtheim: via Jupiter resources on our platform, and that community can talk to each other, meaning the educators can talk to each other, learn from each other, develop best practices share best practices da da da.
Frank Wurtheim: deal with, teach each others about how to get around bugs, etc. Etc. Etc. And all of that is supported via the the matrix channel. In addition
Frank Wurtheim: to the A
Frank Wurtheim: to the matrix channels
Frank Wurtheim: where educators talk to each other. We're also offering one, for where the educators talk to the students.
Frank Wurtheim: In in. And the that's the ticketing system and everything else on this page, I think, is probably self-explanatory. So let's go to the next slide.
Frank Wurtheim: Now, what is required from you. If you want to teach
Frank Wurtheim: a class on our platform.
Frank Wurtheim: you need to submit a syllabus of the plan class.
Frank Wurtheim: We can provide you examples from previous classes that have already been taught. And I'll give you some names in the next slide.
Frank Wurtheim: We want to get some information about you from you. What exactly do you need for the course? Do you need data? Where's the location? What's the structure? Basically, we want to understand
Frank Wurtheim: how much
Frank Wurtheim: technical support you need from us. In order to pull this off.
Frank Wurtheim: We wanted to get an understanding of the number of students, the dates, the classes happen.
Frank Wurtheim: The latter is only important if you use is especially important. If you intend to use our platform inside the classroom, if you use our platform only for for assignments.
Frank Wurtheim: then we don't need
Frank Wurtheim: the dates of the classes as as importantly. And so we also want from you to know
Frank Wurtheim: what exactly is your plan? Are you planning to use us during classroom?
Frank Wurtheim: Is it only for assignments? Is it for homework? Is it for quizzes? Are they quizzes at a certain time. Basically, if you bring a few 100 students to our platform, we want to understand when in time, you actually need interactive support. Because
Frank Wurtheim: when I have 300 students active and want to do something, and that's we want you to tell us as part of your or proposal.
Frank Wurtheim: Finally, we want to get a little bit of a sense of what kind of resources you need
Frank Wurtheim: in particular, if you're working, if you intend to do something with ll, M.
Frank Wurtheim: What's the Lm, what kind of memory those kinds of things? If you don't use lms, then the requirements are probably less stringent.
Frank Wurtheim: and we need to know a little bit of what to prepare for, so that we can appropriately support you.
Frank Wurtheim: next slide.
Frank Wurtheim: Now I want to go into. There's at present there's about, I want to say, maybe half a dozen institutions that teach anywhere between a couple to a couple dozen classes on the platform right now.
Frank Wurtheim: and I want to give you 2 examples. In fact, I'm probably going to just give you one example in dangerous of time. California versus San Bernardino, next slide.
Frank Wurtheim: Tsu San Bernardino is an interesting institution, in that it has a fair number of students, 19,000,
Frank Wurtheim: but 57% of them are peltland recipients.
Frank Wurtheim: and the institution is Hispanic Soviet Institution. So it's
Frank Wurtheim: it's not your typical Harvard or Mit, or Uses D. For that matter, it is an institution much more representative of the bulk of the 3,900 institution of higher learning in the Us.
Frank Wurtheim: Currently, they're offering the courses that I've listed here that they've done in the past, and they offer routinely.
Frank Wurtheim: There's some machine learning, some big data analytics, all the usual stuff that you'd expect
Frank Wurtheim: next slide.
Frank Wurtheim: And we have filibi of some of these is available for you.
Frank Wurtheim: The history of Csu San Bernardino on the platform is they very much started, just like you would be starting they
Frank Wurtheim: started with a single class in our Jupiter Hub. By our Jupiter resources!
Frank Wurtheim: At that point we loved it. They then created a copy of our hub
Frank Wurtheim: which they now run for their own university.
Frank Wurtheim: And so the reason why I'm stressing this is because ultimately, while we're all all for you teaching a single class. We're really wanting to teach you how to fish rather than provide you food.
Frank Wurtheim: Ultimately, we're looking long term as you to engage with the platform.
Frank Wurtheim: Decide where this is the kind of thing that makes you happy to teach a class, and then your institution
Frank Wurtheim: to become a partner, and therefore scale this out by your institution and your own hub, teaching your own dozens of classes, etc, etc, etc.
Frank Wurtheim: So there's a long-term exit strategy as well as an incoming strategy.
Frank Wurtheim: Next slide.
Frank Wurtheim: Next state. How much time do you have left.
Alejandro Suarez: I think you have about 5 min left.
Frank Wurtheim: Okay, I have plenty of time. Then let's go through this. A. Another example is the University of Missouri, which is leveraging the Youtube list for stem and aiml, expansual learning and education.
Frank Wurtheim: They have, like many of the institutions that work. With that currently they also started small. They started with trying this out. Then they invested in buying their own hardware. We operated for them.
Frank Wurtheim: And I, if you want to learn more about how that works, send me an email. And when we do this separately from this webinar, and at this point they have they. They wrote a proposal for CC. Star award that gave them hardware to add on to, and at this point they use this infrastructure as it is prescribed here, in order to both do experiential learning opportunities as well as teach classroom next slide.
Frank Wurtheim: And the kind of classes include computer science classes, Hpc. Classes, undergrad air science.
Frank Wurtheim: Hbc emphasis for the graduate data science. And we also from Missouri, also gave us a a example syllabus that we can share with you. And they're also teaching and courses from the Department of Higher Education workforce Development. So that sort of they both use the platform for regular classroom teaching, but also for what I would more call training and workforce development courses that are not
Frank Wurtheim: a regular quarter or semi or semester schedule, but on other schedules.
Frank Wurtheim: Next slide
Frank Wurtheim: summary.
Frank Wurtheim: the our offering for their classroom offices, Jupiter resources that can back. And and to use Gpu nodes or nautilus and any other integrated nodes. Basically, if we don't have the gpus that you want, we'll figure something out, we'll find, and the Gpus elsewhere. And because the infrastructure is sufficiently flexible that we can go out in the cloud and integrate Gpus from the cloud into our platform.
Frank Wurtheim: The classes that we're looking for you to teach is aiml or using Eml in domain, science
Frank Wurtheim: proposal should include syllabus, etc. All the information I said
Frank Wurtheim: an ideal
Frank Wurtheim: engagement from our side would be. If you want to teach something in the fall.
Frank Wurtheim: you should actually submit your request now, so that we can give you access over the summer
Frank Wurtheim: over the summer. You figure out how to actually do this, and we teach you how to do this. We learn you get your tas. The moment that you get your tears is assigned to you you can get them onto the platform. Figure out how it works, so that you are up and running, and don't have to
Frank Wurtheim: have any stress at the beginning of the semester or the quarter in the fall, but we're really angling towards regular classroom teaching fall a quarter or fall semester.
Frank Wurtheim: and there's a vibrant, vibrant community that you can tap into right away the moment that you get access, and you can ask others. So how have you done this? What work, what doesn't work, etc. We monitor that chat room.
Frank Wurtheim: But we don't necessarily provide always the answers, because the idea is to create a community that self supports each other and ultimately can grow and is not limited by our pockets, and and the amount of effort that is available that we can put on this
Frank Wurtheim: and I think that's it.
Frank Wurtheim: Ask any questions you want.
Alejandro Suarez: Thank you so much, Frank.
Alejandro Suarez: Now we will turn it over to Vocarium.
Alejandro Suarez: And please.
Alejandro Suarez: hey, David.
David Lin (Vocareum): Yeah. Hi, as Alan Ellen mentioned earlier, there are significant challenges when teaching AI at scale, including supporting a curriculum that incorporates the latest in AI advancements
David Lin (Vocareum): ensuring access to appropriate cloud and AI resources supporting diverse skill levels
David Lin (Vocareum): among the different learners and providing enough hands on experience.
David Lin (Vocareum): So today we're pleased to share that to the vulcarium is advancing AI education in partnership with this near pilot classroom initiative.
David Lin (Vocareum): As you may know, vulcarium is a leading hands-on platform in the tech space. We've reached over 4 million learners and are in use at more than 7,000 colleges and universities worldwide.
David Lin (Vocareum): Some of you
David Lin (Vocareum): may already be using vocarium through Aws Academy Udasti scholarship programs, Dan Bridge University alliances, or one of our many other programs and partnerships around the world.
David Lin (Vocareum): So our suite
David Lin (Vocareum): products support hands-on learning for generative AI cloud computing machine learning data, science and more next slide
David Lin (Vocareum): in terms of our contribution today and for the next 2 years Vocarim is donating 20,000 seats of our AI notebook in support of Nair.
David Lin (Vocareum): This donation reflects our commitment to ensuring that AI education is inclusive and accessible, leaving no one behind.
David Lin (Vocareum): What really excites us about ner is the potential to train the next generation. AI leaders at a massive scale
David Lin (Vocareum): next slide.
David Lin (Vocareum): So what is the Vulcan AI notebook? Well, it's a cloud-based, enhanced Jupiter notebook, designed specifically for teaching and learning. AI
David Lin (Vocareum): so incorporates numerous features tailored towards education, including integration into Lms.
David Lin (Vocareum): Here you'll see that vocarium is, I framed right into a canvas instance here.
David Lin (Vocareum): Okay, students can do the work and submit their their work
David Lin (Vocareum): for automated assessments through. Mb, greater.
David Lin (Vocareum): We can set up team projects for learners to work together,
David Lin (Vocareum): on on different projects, and everything is delivered through the browser.
David Lin (Vocareum): In addition, you can easily add secure and budgeted resources
David Lin (Vocareum): like Gpus for deep learning. Gen. AI to help teach prompt engineering
David Lin (Vocareum): and also using genai Api keys to build applications.
David Lin (Vocareum): Okay? And so
David Lin (Vocareum): you know, for model training. We can seamlessly send jobs directly to Gpus for processing.
David Lin (Vocareum): You control the type of instances. The scaling policies as well as the budgets
David Lin (Vocareum): for the users and the organizations
David Lin (Vocareum): for prompt engineering. We also have introduced a prompt cell type.
David Lin (Vocareum): Okay, so that learners can quickly interact with different models.
David Lin (Vocareum): Okay? As well as using embeddings and rag to enhance the quality and the relevance of the generated outputs.
David Lin (Vocareum): So it makes it really easy to tie in and in once one place
David Lin (Vocareum): integrate all the AI sort of capabilities
David Lin (Vocareum): these features really ensured that both educators and learners
David Lin (Vocareum): have a robust, scalable efficient platform for learning and experimenting with AI.
David Lin (Vocareum): And I think to be clear, volcan does not provide any instructional content or assignments. We're in the platform that helps you deliver those most effectively
David Lin (Vocareum): in the 1st batch of their classroom allocations. We'll be supporting Iowa State University
David Lin (Vocareum): with their translational AI. But boot camps
David Lin (Vocareum): next slide.
David Lin (Vocareum): So we do provide optional, secure budgeted
David Lin (Vocareum): and policy controlled access to resources which can be provisioned at the institution learner or lab levels.
David Lin (Vocareum): Okay, so this includes cloud infrastructure like aws, azure. Tcp.
David Lin (Vocareum): it also includes a model. And Api access
David Lin (Vocareum): to open AI, Claude and others.
David Lin (Vocareum): Book terms. AI notebook is actually
David Lin (Vocareum): the 1st of its kind that fully integrates managed access
David Lin (Vocareum): to these type of resources, and these can all be configured by an organization administrator
David Lin (Vocareum): as well as instructors.
David Lin (Vocareum): Next slide.
David Lin (Vocareum): I think what further distinguishes the AI notebooks from other platforms like Google, Colab or Jupiter Hub, are the classroom features
David Lin (Vocareum): which really include various assessment approaches, including manual and automated grading.
David Lin (Vocareum): ta, or instructor inline feedback.
David Lin (Vocareum): In student code
David Lin (Vocareum): peer reviews so that students can gain access to
David Lin (Vocareum): to other student environments.
David Lin (Vocareum): run the run the environments as well as provide feedback and also provide a avenue for multiple choice assessments.
David Lin (Vocareum): Another neat option is a leaderboard which allows instructors to run competitions and score submissions based on various criteria.
David Lin (Vocareum): In terms of how the Vulcan AI notebook can be used. It can be used in a live classroom could be used online. It could. You know it could be used in an exam scenario, so it could be a high stakes exam, for example.
David Lin (Vocareum): next slide
David Lin (Vocareum): in terms of recommended usage. It is ideal for any university course. Our Lti integration means that there's no need to lock into vocarium directly.
David Lin (Vocareum): Learners are sent straight to their Bookram AI notebook from the Lms, so it's fully embedded into the experience.
David Lin (Vocareum): Student work is retained for the duration of the course.
David Lin (Vocareum): Okay? And then, after students have submitted. Then the
David Lin (Vocareum): the grades are automatically generated by the auto. Grader and student scores are sent automatically to the Lms grade books.
David Lin (Vocareum): Okay? So it's you know, kind of a very clean experience for instructors. And of course instructors can again access to provide their own, you know, kind of teach a class give Demos, and then also.
David Lin (Vocareum): instructors have access to the various learner
David Lin (Vocareum): activities as well. So not just the
David Lin (Vocareum): the peers can share access to
David Lin (Vocareum): to learn our work, but the instructors have, of course, have access such that they can
David Lin (Vocareum): do the manual grading as well as provide feedback.
David Lin (Vocareum): Next slide.
David Lin (Vocareum): Another recommended use would be to run workshops, boot camps for hackathons, using our vocarium AI notebook
David Lin (Vocareum): this allows learners to or users to self register on the Vulcan platform, and we will, we can grant short lived access to the notebooks and associated resources.
David Lin (Vocareum): Last month at the Nvidia's developer conference aws hosted a workshop on the on vulcarium, and which taught folks how to train robots into cloud with Nvidia and Gpus
David Lin (Vocareum): next slide.
David Lin (Vocareum): so to recap. Vulcan is offering 20,000 seats of the Vulcan AI notebook to the New York community. This includes a star kit with onboarding, support, grading assistance and customization of the environment.
David Lin (Vocareum): Next slide.
David Lin (Vocareum): And we look forward to your proposals, questions.
David Lin (Vocareum): and any engagement happy to
David Lin (Vocareum): to to answer any questions, and then at some point, if you'd like, we can set up a demo
David Lin (Vocareum): and walk through it. Live.
David Lin (Vocareum): Thank you.
Alejandro Suarez: Thank you very much, David.
Alejandro Suarez: So those are our contributed partner presentations, and we are now going to open it up for QA. We just want to highlight once again that a recording of this webinar will be available in the next week or so at the event page from which you signed up to this event. So that is available at the link above or at the QR code to your right.
Alejandro Suarez: So just keep an eye out for the recording that will be posted there. If you wanna learn more about announcements about the near pilot. Say new resources that are coming online, the webinar that we just held, or other types of announcements and activities. You can subscribe to our mailing list right on the homepage of their pilotor. You could scroll down a little bit to the subscribe for updates button that will pre-populate an email that can sign you up for our mailing list.
Alejandro Suarez: and as a reminder, you can use the QA. Feature on zoom to submit questions. I know we have a team of colleagues at Nsf. And from our our partner con contributors that have already been answering several of your questions. So thank you very much to them. What I'm going to do now is just start going through some of the pending questions that we may be able to answer live as we finish off our presentation today.
Alejandro Suarez: So let me just
Alejandro Suarez: go through. Here's us a simple one, maybe, for our vocarium colleagues is, can you elaborate on the term 20,000 seats as this number students at a particular time? Or how are you defining 20,000.
David Lin (Vocareum): Yeah, so basically, it's 20,000 current seats.
David Lin (Vocareum): On a monthly basis. So
David Lin (Vocareum): so if you are teaching
David Lin (Vocareum): a course for a thousand.
David Lin (Vocareum): you know users in a workshop that will last, you know, 2 weeks. That. Would.
David Lin (Vocareum): you know? Just just be those number seats
David Lin (Vocareum): right? And the next month you can do it again.
David Lin (Vocareum): Right? So
David Lin (Vocareum): yeah, hopefully, that's that's clear. So if you're teaching a class that will span.
David Lin (Vocareum): you know, a full semester 3 months, and you need, you know, a thousand seats that would,
David Lin (Vocareum): you know, eat into into that allocation for those those months.
Alejandro Suarez: Thank you, David.
Alejandro Suarez: Let's
Alejandro Suarez: see some of the other
Alejandro Suarez: questions.
Alejandro Suarez: here's 1 for the the Pnrp, are there any training resources or tutorials available at at Ucsd, or I guess more generally.
Frank Wurtheim: Mina, do you want to comment on that.
Mahidhar Tatineni: Yeah, so we have tutorials on on the pnp documentation page that have, like a lot of the basic things that you need for interacting with that
Mahidhar Tatineni: with with the cluster. We also do. Lots of workshops. There's 1 coming up at Perk
Mahidhar Tatineni: that we're gonna do on using the machine?
Mahidhar Tatineni: So yeah, we do have resources for classes per se. There might be some more specific things needed. Like, for example, if you want to spin up your own.
Mahidhar Tatineni: if you want to spin up your own instance of Jupyter we would help you through the metrics channel. So the metrics channel Frank mentioned for Jupiter Hub Admins is essentially a mechanism to get people started like certain for new new faculty member or
Mahidhar Tatineni: user wants to get started. With that, they can just go in the channel and see what's already being done. We actually have a get lab instance with all the setup for a default option.
Mahidhar Tatineni: But I think there was a question about, you know, changing images and having different kinds of environments, all of those that is possible, and we can help you through the channel.
Alejandro Suarez: Thank you very much.
Alejandro Suarez: Oh, I see we we're also joined by our office director of the office, advanced cyber infrastructure. Katie and tas Katie, you have some comments for us. Welcome.
Katie antypas: Yeah, I just noticed there are many questions about the demonstration projects, and I see Marlon kind of repeating the same. The same response in there. I think it's worth noting just again that when you request, send in a 3 page application for
Katie antypas: near pilot resources you you requesting those resources. There isn't an exchange of
Katie antypas: of funding.
Katie antypas: We do
Katie antypas: have this demonstration project opportunity as well. Okay, and that is a request for funding for demonstration projects of the near or the near. Now, if you you're
Katie antypas: if your thought is that you, you only need
Katie antypas: the resources, computing or data resources, then that is not a good match for demonstration project. A demonstration project is Al said, is a combination of infrastructure with a domain science, and you should send a concept outline to us, you know, as Al said, at near underscore pilot at Nsf. Gov. And so there's
Katie antypas: anyway, there's 2 2 opportunities going on here, and the primary one is to provide their research and education, community access to resources.
Alejandro Suarez: Thank you, Katie, for that clarification. Yes, we we talked about sort of as an aside some other Nsf specific Nsf funding activities that are available, and the Dcl. Is one that is a bridge between the Nsf. Funded activities and near pilot connections. But, as as Katie said, that is separate from these education requests and separate from allocation requests. It's much more substantive.
Alejandro Suarez: So let's see if we have
Alejandro Suarez: the other questions.
Alejandro Suarez: The
Alejandro Suarez: yes. What are the questions that are still pending?
Alejandro Suarez: Oh, so I see a a question or asks are there abilities to adjust extensions, kernels, or language servers that are that are provided in these Jupiter instances, and I would maybe more generally say that to either of the notebook instances of the the 2 different providers that we discussed. So I don't know if our Ucsd colleagues and then our vocarium colleagues could talk to that one.
Mahidhar Tatineni: So everything on on the Nautilus side is essentially containerized in terms of what image you use for the Jupiter notebook.
Mahidhar Tatineni: So on the back end you could pretty much choose whatever you want. That has the tools that you need.
Mahidhar Tatineni: And add Jupiter to that. And deploy it, and that's the sort of thing we would help you with if if you're trying to deploy something different
Mahidhar Tatineni: just about the only constraint I can think of is
Mahidhar Tatineni: the drivers on the node on the Gp node, just making sure whatever you install is compatible with the underlying hardware drivers and everything that's about it.
David Lin (Vocareum): Yeah, with volcano. It's it's similar. You know.
David Lin (Vocareum): you can customize containers for
David Lin (Vocareum): whatever needs you have.
Alejandro Suarez: Thank you, David.
Alejandro Suarez: Oh, I see we have, Katie's typing this one, but I think it may be important to highlight as well in the
Alejandro Suarez: the main session.
Alejandro Suarez: There was a questioner that asked that on the near pilot web pages there are some resources from Nsf. Cloud Bank and jet stream 2 and other nationally available resources like our super competing resources. What would be the difference between applying
Alejandro Suarez: to narr versus those programs? So just as as a note Nsf does and has historically supported allocation programs for time on super computers. The current version of that one of the main current versions of that is the access program, and that is for researchers in any kind of computationally position, science
Alejandro Suarez: to request some time on a super computer that may be most relevant to the type of science they are doing. So those are still available and still serving researchers.
Alejandro Suarez: The near pilot is providing over and above resources. So additional allocations on those existing systems and availability of new systems that are specific to AI research and domain specific research that applies AI needs as well as training activities that can inform and foster the next generation of AI researchers that we are discussing
Alejandro Suarez: today. So I hope that differentiates that. Yes, there are some activities or some resources that are available through both
Alejandro Suarez: and you are free to request resources through the the other means by which they're available as well. If that's more relevant to you. But the ner is yet another opportunity that allows more institutions to be able to request such resources and a different type of resource, different types of resources to be available. In addition to some of these more traditional
Alejandro Suarez: computing resources that we have.
Frank Wurtheim: Can. Can I ask it? Alhandrew? Can I maybe add something clarifying.
Alejandro Suarez: Please. Go ahead, Frank.
Frank Wurtheim: My about the access versus my understanding is that some of the contributions to the near pilot
Frank Wurtheim: can only be received.
Frank Wurtheim: but via the near Pilot, for example.
Frank Wurtheim: the Aws and the Microsoft azure contributions to the near pilot
Frank Wurtheim: while they are administered by Cloud Bank. They cannot be gotten directly from Cloud Bank is that by the Cloud Bank program? Is that true?
Alejandro Suarez: Yes, thank you. Thank you, Frank, for that for that clarification. So some of the nationally available resources, like the Nsf Cloud Bank program, they have specific restrictions on who is eligible to apply. So the eligibility criteria to apply for, say, cloud computing resources through Cloud bank are different, and hence someone who may not be eligible via the Cloud Bank route to apply for
Alejandro Suarez: you. You brought up aws resources. They would be eligible possibly to apply for those resources through the near pilots and through the criteria that we have through the near pilot. So that's another differentiator between these types of availability of resources that we have.
Alejandro Suarez: So, thank you, Frank.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): There's some questions about how to apply for the resources. Can you send out a link? I type in the chat.
Alejandro Suarez: Yes. So there is. If you look in the on the near pilot web page and a link was just provided within our our chat. You can go into the there's a little dropdown menu at the top
Alejandro Suarez: or you can scroll down and see the current opportunities so the classroom and educator resources. If you click, apply.
Alejandro Suarez: That is where you find information about the 2 resources that were described today, and some application instructions, as well as a pointer to the submission system, to be able to put in your application for these resources.
Alejandro Suarez: So let's see other questions
Alejandro Suarez: that
Alejandro Suarez: been available.
Alejandro Suarez: Oh, here's an interesting question in terms of the types, of coursework that could use some of these resources, and maybe our our colleagues
Alejandro Suarez: at Pnrp and vocarium can respond to this would certificate programs and professional training courses offered by universities be eligible for such resources. So I will just point out in terms of the eligibility criteria. If you're a Us. Based researcher at a Us based institution. So if if you're you're from a us based. Institution. That's the main criteria. So if it's for a course offered by your institution
Alejandro Suarez: that, that would not negate your eligibility for applying to the the near pilots and applying to these education resources. But I'll let my colleagues from our partners talk about what that fit might look like if you're running a certificate program or professional training course.
Frank Wurtheim: I see if the Nsf. Is happy. We're happy.
Alejandro Suarez: And just one last clarification when it comes to what it says. Professional training courses. We discussed the eligibility of us based institutions. And those can be research institutions, institutions of higher education. When it comes to any for profit businesses. We talk about how small businesses may be eligible provided they have some sort of federal funding. For example, an sbir award.
David Lin (Vocareum): Yeah. And for Vulcan, I think, any educational institutions? Who may want to run these these programs that should be okay.
David Lin (Vocareum): But yeah, for profit. We just that's not really the intended purpose here.
Alejandro Suarez: Thank you. David
Alejandro Suarez: Haiti. Yes.
Katie antypas: Yeah, I'll maybe I should just add, I know you covered it at the beginning. Is that this really is just the start we intend to bring on a line more education resources as we move forward. So please please stay tuned and
Katie antypas: over the next months and into the fall.
Alejandro Suarez: Yes, thank you, Katie. So so we should note that these these resources
Alejandro Suarez: the resources that you heard about today only started coming online
Alejandro Suarez: about a month ago, and there are, you know, more resources that will come online. We'll see more of the outcomes of the initial allocations on these resources you'll be able to learn about. You know, some examples of what can be done with these resources in addition to what was already discussed at the presentations today. So there's there's a lot more functionality. We'll be building up along the near pilot, and we welcome your participation in letting us know sort of
Alejandro Suarez: what you think about the availability of these resources. How easy they are to find how easy they are to use this will all help inform the evolution of the near pilot as we move forward over the coming months.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): We have several question about the feature of now. Maybe in case they can answer that.
Katie antypas: Yeah, sure, if you read it out, there's.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): Oh, okay, okay, it does. Pilot has an end date.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): And what's the vision of the pilot versus the
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): vision of the
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): changing stuff.
Katie antypas: Yeah. So the the near pilot as as Al mentioned, Nsf was directed to launch the near pilot with our many
Katie antypas: agency partners as a response to the AI executive order. And so what we were direct to do was really launch the pilot with our existing resources to demonstrate the potential, the impact, the value of the larger near concept.
Katie antypas: the full narr full naira itself is as described in the near Taskforce report is a 2.6 billion dollar initiative envisioned over a period of 6 years that would require additional funding to achieve.
Katie antypas: And so what we are, you know, trying to do now is show this the value of this concept to the community? Really include the community and every step of the way to get. You know your your feedback on what is most useful, as we, you know. Hopefully, we'll be able to go forward and build out a larger error.
Alejandro Suarez: Thank you. Katie.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): Thank you.
Alejandro Suarez: So
Alejandro Suarez: I'm seeing an earlier question.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): Should we go back.
Alejandro Suarez: So about, has there been discussion about
Alejandro Suarez: how sharing educational items and elements so that they're openly accessible.
Alejandro Suarez: those inside and outside, those prospective communities of practice.
Alejandro Suarez: Through infrastructure, like osf or other repositories. So that's a great question. And we should note that when it comes to accessing the research resources available via the near pilot. Any research that is done on use of those resour with use of those resources should be published openly. So in terms of internal research.
Alejandro Suarez: We don't allow anything that isn't sort of published in some sort of community venue or journal and is is available. The outcomes are available. So this feedback is, is very useful when it comes to the sharing of educational items, and how this evolves the other activities that we funded Nsf. And with other agencies on the curriculum development itself.
Alejandro Suarez: We should note that the availability of the resources that you heard about today is specifically the infrastructure to support the curriculum or education and training opportunities that you may have existing or that you are developing independently through your through your institutions.
Alejandro Suarez: But we we're definitely hearing this interest in more openly available training opportunities, coursework and other related work there. Jen, did you have some additional.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): Right if they had. Yes, if you have any request for any kind of educational items, elements, you can send it to us
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): bye, and we can work from there.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): Any request gets sent to us.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): Okay? So that's the 1st question.
Alejandro Suarez: Thank you. Jen.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): Okay, the otherwise smaller IP, right? I think you answered that right.
Alejandro Suarez: Yes, I think the when it was there was a similar question on the the IP. And how do you make some of this more, more available. And we we do understand having more training materials available to more student communities is is definitely something that we're hearing.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): Another question is probably for Dan. Does any access to this chat? The question and answers.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): can I get to the question and answers, besides, the video.
Alejandro Suarez: Oh, yes, I I see that question as well. Yes, thank you for that feedback. We'll look into how we can make the the the chat transcript available. If we can make that available, it will be available in the same way that we make the recording available, which will be via that event link that you see in the QR code on screen.
Alejandro Suarez: So thanks for that feedback.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): Yeah, he.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): thank you. Next one.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): So it's a Nvidia stitching kit.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): Oy.
Alejandro Suarez: Yes, I'm not sure. There was a questioner that asked about whether the
Alejandro Suarez: and video do I teaching.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): Right? Yeah, that's the question.
Alejandro Suarez: Useful.
Alejandro Suarez: I I think that. Well, that may be. I don't know if our our colleagues at Vocarium or Pnrp. Are familiar with doi teaching the the Nvidia Dli teaching kits but that may be sort of a question related to what what types of backends are compatible with either vocaria more pnrp, but if others have comments on that
Alejandro Suarez: you may, you may know more than me on that subject.
David Lin (Vocareum): Unfortunately, I don't have any information about that.
Mahidhar Tatineni: Yeah, I'll have to check on what's
Mahidhar Tatineni: what's in it before.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): Yes, and then the media does provide the resources, and we do as one of the resource providers.
Mahidhar Tatineni: Oh, okay.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): And this teaching one is it. It's free. Yes, Daniel.
Daniel Bullock: Oh, I just have a separate question we can address if we're moving on question. So around 3 0 1, it looks like we have a question regarding just the general review process for submissions. Al, if you would wanted to cover just sort of the
Daniel Bullock: general application, process and review process.
Alejandro Suarez: Yes. So you'll see some documentation on the near pilot website the near classroom. Requests follow a very similar process to what is done for the research application. So essentially, you'll fill out an application. It will be reviewed in terms of an alignment with the near pilot goals and sort of what education activities you're doing, the justification of the resources you're looking for.
Alejandro Suarez: And you got some some further feedback about what
Alejandro Suarez: the different types of resources that are available are looking for in when providing those resources. After that alignment review by outside experts. It will be.
Alejandro Suarez: Those! Those proposals will be shared with the providers, and there will be a matching step in which, if you, if you requested a specific resource.
Alejandro Suarez: that resource will be able to say, alright. We have room to be able to accommodate this, or maybe we have some questions we need to ask of the proposer, or there may be some other outcomes that that may need to be considered and this is all hopefully done within the course of of just a few weeks. So within the the 15th of each month we will see what has been submitted to that point, and we will start reviewing them for.
Alejandro Suarez: or that alignment and the matching to the appropriate resource. This is done sort of in parallel with the education as well as the research resources. And so right now we. So we just had the one set of
Alejandro Suarez: requests that came in May 15, th we're going through and finishing up the review process for those, and we will start the process
Alejandro Suarez: right at the same time with proposals that are submitted by June 15.th
Alejandro Suarez: So we're all hoping to do that relatively quickly. And if you have questions, you can see what the FAQ at the nearpilot org website has that's just available in the dropdown from the about page, and you can, if you have any questions. There's also a little help button and some ticketing systems within our application process that can can help you get the help you need.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): There's another question on the volume at 2, 4, 5,
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): does it? Which type of systems
Alejandro Suarez: Oh, this was asking, how translatable is the vocarium tools to in field systems and which types of systems
Alejandro Suarez: I don't know if we need more information from our questioner on that one.
David Lin (Vocareum): Yeah, I wasn't sure what
David Lin (Vocareum): what they were getting at
David Lin (Vocareum): ideally. We can get a little more information on that.
Alejandro Suarez: To that question. Feel free to. If you wanna define what in field systems are a little bit more we can try to get you an answer on that.
Alejandro Suarez: We had a question that asked. You know, could you talk about educator resources that might be apple applicable for K, 12 educators. That's a great question. As you may have seen from the presentations today, a lot of the resources that we have available are geared primarily towards
Alejandro Suarez: undergraduate or maybe even graduate student settings. However, there are other opportunities that are available especially for broadening participation and computing Nsf programs that are on that line. Jen, you may have more that you can say on that.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): Yes, for educate AI, they have the Cs for all. And thus it's connected to K to 12
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): like, and I think Frank also mentioned that they have some k to 12.
Frank Wurtheim: Yeah, the the we're we're working with scenic. The regional networking organization in California
Frank Wurtheim: and Scenic has his target audience, K, 12. Public libraries.
Frank Wurtheim: the whole range.
Frank Wurtheim: and so they want to use our platform also for K. 12 education and offer it in. And but we haven't done it yet, so I can't give you an example that I could actually say, Here's a here's a teacher who's used this in grade 11 to teach Blah.
Frank Wurtheim: But fundamentally.
Frank Wurtheim: we're not excluding it. So if somebody were to put in a near classroom request
Frank Wurtheim: for teaching
Frank Wurtheim: something that requires that that makes useful use of the Pnrp
Frank Wurtheim: in A. K 12 context, we will certainly review it and consider it, and there's no reason why not.
Alejandro Suarez: Thank you, Frank.
Alejandro Suarez: I see.
Alejandro Suarez: Dan, can you bring up or sorry, Marlon, can you? Highlight? Which question you were asking about the Us based researcher requirement.
Alejandro Suarez: Just make sure we answer the right one.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): Yeah. Tell us the time. I don't see
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): what time.
Daniel Bullock: It's making reference to some documentation on one of the narrow pages that indicates that
Daniel Bullock: the courses themselves have to be strictly accessible
Daniel Bullock: for individuals affiliated with Us. Institutions.
Alejandro Suarez: Yes. So in terms of this, this comes back to the usage of the
Alejandro Suarez: the research and education resources. So in either of those settings, the users.
Alejandro Suarez: And so this would be the the the students that may be using the resource for a given class need to be part of a Us. Based institution, so that has nothing to do with citizenship of the students or background of the students or their immigration status of the students. All it has to do is, what is the institutional affiliation of the student?
Alejandro Suarez: So a student that is, affiliated with the Us. Based University, for example, that is where they're taking the course. That is an appropriate usage case. For the the near pilot, a student that is affiliated with an international university based outside of the Us. And using the resource
Alejandro Suarez: or course outside of the Us. Would not be eligible for near pilot resources. To that end. I hope that clarifies the the Us. Based user requirements of the near pilot.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): We have several questions about education material. I think. I we answer that is that if we don't have anything right now that you're looking for. Please let us know. Can send us email contact us.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): Hi.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): thank you.
Alejandro Suarez: Yes, and we will put some of our emails in the chat as well. If you have questions about the A, any of the things that were discussed here.
Alejandro Suarez: you may have seen.
Alejandro Suarez: Let me just type in my email here.
Alejandro Suarez: So
Alejandro Suarez: you can reach me via my email as far as@nsf.gov, you may have received that email when you registered for the presentations today. And I'd be happy to forward that along to whoever can answer your question best. Otherwise you can reach out to folks at vocarium or Ucsd or other colleagues at Nsf. Directly.
Alejandro Suarez: and if you have more general questions about the near pilot or other ways you wish to get involved, my colleague Katie, just put in near_pilot@nsf.gov is our general email address for all inquiries related to the pilot.
Alejandro Suarez: Another question, Dad.
Daniel Bullock: Yes, at 2 57. There's a question that appears to be asking about funding for the Nara pilot which I am interpreting. As for rather than from
Daniel Bullock: so it may be asking about the broader sort of funding landscape for the near
Daniel Bullock: pilot.
Alejandro Suarez: Yes, Kenya, yes, yes, 2, 5, 6.
Katie antypas: Yeah,
Katie antypas: so
Katie antypas: I I for the near pilot itself, I think. You have to stay tuned to hear more about what may be available in an Fy 24 budget Nsf's a fy, 25 presence request budget is is 30 million dollars for the pilot. You know. That obviously, is is public information.
Katie antypas: And then for the full ner I mean, there's draft legislation in a create AI act.
Katie antypas: But that, you know, probably has a ways, a ways to go. So though that's, I think, what we can say at this point.
Alejandro Suarez: Thank you, Katie.
Alejandro Suarez: There was a question. I'll just note some of these. You can also see in the frequently asked questions. Page of an air pilot.org site but this may be worth bring up here is someone had asked.
Alejandro Suarez: That. Do the near requests cover both the Nsf funded infrastructure and industry resources. And if so, what is the maximum allowable request? Size? So anything that is listed on theirpilot.org is eligible to be requested through that opportunity directly through the application process there. So that includes a mixture of activities funded by Nsf. As well as other agencies.
Alejandro Suarez: And the non-government contributors. When it comes to any. Sorry, I think I lost the question here. When it comes to any other
Alejandro Suarez: maximums in terms of how much you can request.
Alejandro Suarez: There's no specific limitation right now on how large of a request you can make especially some of our non government providers like vocarium have noted what is the total amount of resources that they've been able to make available. So I think that's something to keep in mind when you're requesting a resource is you're not likely to be able to get a request for the entirety of the resource that's available. It would have to be some fraction of that.
Alejandro Suarez: I can let my colleagues at Pnrp. Or vocarium talk about some of the scale that you've worked in in the past, or what may make sense when you're looking at proposals or or requests within the near pilot structure.
David Lin (Vocareum): Yeah, for for vulgarium. We
David Lin (Vocareum): are very scalable. So we are able to accommodate most requests. You know, we we do run
David Lin (Vocareum): synchronous you know, large scale events. Actually, this week we're at the data bricks and AI summit, and they've been running workshops all week
David Lin (Vocareum): on on our platform
David Lin (Vocareum): with dozens of of learners.
David Lin (Vocareum): So we can, we can, you know, bring in lots of synchronous learners. It could be, you know, small classrooms as well.
David Lin (Vocareum): And and of course asynchronous is pretty
David Lin (Vocareum): pretty straightforward.
Alejandro Suarez: Anything from our Pnrp colleagues in terms of
Alejandro Suarez: maximum size requests that, or what what you see is the scalability of how much of the resource you can make available for a given request.
Frank Wurtheim: I think. Let me give you.
Frank Wurtheim: It is clearly not as scalable as our commercial friends here.
Frank Wurtheim: I think the a reasonable
Frank Wurtheim: assumption that we are making right now is that we will run out of human effort before we run out of computer computing infrastructure.
Frank Wurtheim: The what we're
Frank Wurtheim: assuming
Frank Wurtheim: we can set aside
Frank Wurtheim: is an infrastructure equivalent to what uses D. Uses to do its own teaching.
Frank Wurtheim: and uses. D. Teaches 50 courses simultaneously
Frank Wurtheim: across 5,000 students.
Frank Wurtheim: I think if you came to us and said, you want a thousand student courses that you're teaching.
Frank Wurtheim: we probably would reject it.
Frank Wurtheim: because we probably that doesn't make doesn't make sense.
Frank Wurtheim: If it is a few 100, a few 100, it's probably doable.
Frank Wurtheim: And where exactly the line is is unclear.
Frank Wurtheim: does that help.
Alejandro Suarez: Thank you, Frank.
Alejandro Suarez: I think.
Mahidhar Tatineni: Yeah, I I also want to jump in and say, that's actually one of the reasons we were asking about the sizes of the resources and all for for the particular class, because it could
Mahidhar Tatineni: also depend on what your particular class needs. Right? You could have a case where
Mahidhar Tatineni: you scale up a lot and need a lot of resources.
Mahidhar Tatineni: Yeah, obviously.
Frank Wurtheim: Obviously, you're not going to be able to use P. And Rp. To teach a class on how to change at Ubt.
Frank Wurtheim: That's obvious.
Frank Wurtheim: Neither. None of us can offer that.
Frank Wurtheim: obviously. And so there are obviously limits.
Frank Wurtheim: And and where exactly those are we'll have to
Frank Wurtheim: sort out. This is why it's called a pilot.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): Okay? So why we here, what it? What about minimum? Any minimum for the students in the class? That's just one question just came up.
Frank Wurtheim: I see no reason why there should be any minimum.
David Lin (Vocareum): And no minimum here, either.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): Okay, thank you.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): And another question also, for
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): I think you mentioned 25 regional chapters, how come the valley is not included.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): Think that's for Frank, probably.
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): The last one. Yes, 3, 1, 8.
Frank Wurtheim: Unless
Juan Jenny Li (NSF/OAC): Or 3, 1, 8, 3, 1, 8.
Frank Wurtheim: I don't understand the question.
Alejandro Suarez: So someone had asked Snare open to collaborating with nonprofits. Universities
Alejandro Suarez: have their own funding programs
Alejandro Suarez: that they want to leverage to support narrow development in particular help with development, distribution of materials.
Alejandro Suarez: For that questioner feel free to reach out at narrow underscore pilot and nsf.gov, especially if there are activities, you know, if there's contributions you wish to make, or if an allocation on some of our resources can can help some of your development activities. If there's some unique way that you'd you'd be interested in partnering with the Narr. We're happy to happy to hear it.
Alejandro Suarez: Think we're
Alejandro Suarez: running out of time.
Alejandro Suarez: I think at this point
Alejandro Suarez: let me just go through our slides one more time, because there were a few questions
Alejandro Suarez: regarding
Alejandro Suarez: I think it's the so there, some some questions about contacting Pnrp, I think that can that can be done through
Alejandro Suarez: reaching out to me or through the near pilot inbox. There's
Alejandro Suarez: If if you have any further questions on that, we'll we'll be sure to route you to the right to the right person.
Alejandro Suarez: But I think that maybe about about time for us.
Alejandro Suarez: So I think what I'm want to do is 1st off, I, I wanna give a great thank you to our partners at Pnrp and vocarium to be able to tell us a little bit more about our activities.
Alejandro Suarez: I'd also like to thank my colleagues, Ellen Zagura and Jenny Lee, who talked about the education opportunities that Nsf. Has available, as well as Katie Antipas, our office director, who has helped out with our QA. We have some other colleagues within Nsf.
Alejandro Suarez: Marlon Pierce and our science technology policy fellow, Daniel Bullock, who has also been tirelessly answering a lot of the questions in the background that you've been asking. So thank you all so much for coming we hope to have more of these webinars on different near pilot resources opportunities new activities that relate to the pilot in in the coming weeks and months. So please look forward to
Alejandro Suarez: future announcements via our mailing list, and we look forward to hearing from you all on the the great types of applications you may put in
Alejandro Suarez: and how you'd be able to use these these resources. So thank you so much for coming.
David Lin (Vocareum): Thank you.