Supported by FAPESP, within the scope of the Engineering Research Centers Program (CPE), the Center will be dedicated to the development of studies and cutting-edge AI research to address topics of great social and economic impact.
O C4AI will be based in the building of the InovaUSP Research and Innovation Center, located at the USP campus, in São Paulo, and will also have a second unit to train students and professionals at the Institute of Mathematical and Computer Sciences (ICMC), on the USP campus in São Carlos, with the start of activities scheduled for February 2021.
FAPESP and IBM will each reserve R$ 2 million annually over the next five years to implement the center's program, which will feature periodic evaluations of activities. In return, USP will invest R$ 4 million per year in physical facilities, laboratories, teachers, technicians and administrators to manage the unit, among other costs.
"The beginning of the operation of the Artificial Intelligence Center represents the continuity of an agreement signed between FAPESP and IBM in 2016, and is part of a continuous effort by the Foundation to promote research partnerships between universities and companies," said Luiz Eugênio de Mello, scientific director of FAPESP, during the online launching ceremony of the Center.
"Although in the State of São Paulo there is already a good interaction between universities and companies, it is possible to advance further in this direction", evaluated Mello.
The C4AI will initially focus on five major challenges related to health, the environment, the food production chain, the future of work and the development of natural language processing technologies in Brazilian Portuguese, looking for ways to improve human well-being and support initiatives for diversity and inclusion.
In parallel, three monitoring committees will be created to promote topics of common interest to the country, with a focus on industry, science and society. The committees aim to expand these five initial challenges and give them a real application that is useful for Brazilian companies and society.
“We seek to identify problems that are strategic for Brazil, to which Brazilian research can make a difference and which IBM researchers can contribute and that the country has a critical mass to address,” said Fabio Cozman, professor at USP and director of the center.
Research topics
In the agricultural area, the objective of the research will be to develop and apply advanced correlation models for decision making based on cause and effect, addressing issues such as water and food waste.
In the environmental area, the researchers will combine machine learning with symbolic knowledge to address complex questions about the Blue Amazon - a vast region of the Atlantic Ocean, on the Brazilian coast, rich in biodiversity and energy resources - and about the marine ecosystem. One of the questions they intend to answer, for example, is what caused the appearance of oil stains on the coast of Northeastern Brazil in 2019.
In the health sector, a study will be carried out on two research fronts. The first will aim to improve the diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of patients who have suffered stroke (stroke) by using complex network analysis techniques in multimodal data. The second will focus on investigating ways to improve the choice of rehabilitation protocols in cases of stroke.
Another objective will be to enable high-level natural language processing for Brazilian Portuguese, as well as for other languages, in order to improve customer service, training virtual assistants, monitoring social networks, as well as enabling the analysis and extraction of knowledge from large data sources.
C4AI will also focus on research related to public policies for artificial intelligence and the collection and analysis of data on the impact of AI on jobs and the future of work.
“The research agenda covers cutting-edge topics in the area of artificial intelligence, in order to be aligned with what is being done elsewhere in the world”, says Cláudio Pinhanez, researcher at IBM and deputy director of C4AI.
The center will be the first in South America to be part of the IBM IA Horizons Network (IAHN) - a program created in 2016 to promote integration and collaboration between the world's leading universities, IBM students and researchers committed to accelerating application AI to some of the biggest global and local challenges, said Jeffrey Welser, VP Exploratory Science & Universities Programs at IBM Research.
"We already have some centers in the United States, Europe, Asia and this will be the first in South America. It will be a great opportunity to strengthen the partnership with universities", evaluated Welser.
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