From coastal resilience to streamlining product development, Northeastern researchers are the state’s AI innovators
Northeastern University engineering professor Jim Chen wants local coastal communities to be ready for sea-level rise and other effects of climate change.
But Chen’s plan is not to construct elaborate levees or sea walls. It’s to use artificial intelligence.
“The goal is to turn data into actionable insights and knowledge,” Chen, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and marine and environmental sciences, said Thursday at the ISEC building on Northeastern University’s Boston campus. “We enable coastal communities to update their risk assessment economically and more efficiently.”
Chen was a winner of the Massachusetts AI Hub’s AI Models Innovation Challenge, a program that provided $2.9 million to researchers and/or organizations developing AI datasets and models to solve some of the state’s most pressing problems.
A ceremony to announce the seven winners — including Chen and Northeastern professor Tucker Marion — was held Thursday on Northeastern’s Boston campus.
“Today’s announcement represents precisely what we envision,” Northeastern Provost Beth Winkelstein told the gathered crowd. “Brilliant minds pushing AI forward in really meaningful ways.”
The Massachusetts AI Hub is a collaboration among government, industry, startups and academia. A division of the quasi-public Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, the hub is funded by a $100 million, 10-year commitment from the Massachusetts Leads Act economic development bill passed into law this fall.
“We are here to position Massachusetts as a leader in applied AI,” said Carolyn Kirk, CEO of MassTech, which is responsible for driving competitiveness and growth in innovation in the state.
Secretary of Economic Development Eric Paley agreed.
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“I think we have an extraordinary strength in fields like health care, education, clean energy and numerous others where Massachusetts is well positioned — if not almost entitled — to win if we do what we need to do,” said Paley, a longtime venture capitalist.
And one of the things that the state needs to do, according to Paley, is to invest in AI innovators.
That’s where Chen and Marion come in.
Chen will develop an AI model that applies coastal data to predict future risks from sea-level rise. He will be working with the town of Marshfield, Massachusetts, to implement the model and update its coastal resiliency plan.
Marion, meanwhile, aims to accelerate and improve early-stage product development industries — for example, the footwear, fashion and manufacturing industries — by using open source, generative design models in collaboration with Northeastern spinout Ada IQ.
“What we want to do is use AI to provide better decision-making and concept exploration and refinement for new products, particularly consumer products,” said Marion, associate professor of entrepreneurship and innovation and mechanical and industrial engineering at Northeastern.
Marion says that this will help companies reduce “product failure” — 60% to 70% of new products fail to gain traction with consumers, as well as reduce waste and boost profits.
Other winners included two teams from Worcester Polytechnic Institute focused on improving forecasting for waste-to-energy projects and improving recycling, respectively; Boston Children’s Hospital, which plans to use AI to improve care for children with Crohn’s disease and similar ailments; a researcher from Western New England College who is developing a way to detect defects in metal manufacturing in real time; and the nonprofit EarthDNA, which is using AI to target footwear waste.
“We’re going to see AI in everything in Massachusetts,” Paley said. “We’re using AI to drive these areas forward at a whole new level.
