Monday, October 12, 2026, was an AI-heavy day on the Flats. Georgia Tech announced a major philanthropic investment aimed at putting artificial intelligence into the hands of researchers nationwide, and the Office of Information Technology unveiled a three-day campuswide summit designed to raise the Institute’s collective AI fluency. Here is your daily digest of Georgia Tech academics and research news.
Google.org Commits $5 Million to Expand Access to AI for Scientific Discovery
Georgia Tech has received an initial $2.25 million for the first year of a program backed by a $5 million overall commitment from Google.org, with the goal of helping scientists across the country put AI to work in their research. The three-year initiative targets a real bottleneck in modern science: plenty of researchers have the questions, but not the computing power, tooling, or training to use AI at scale, and tools built for one computing system often will not run on another. “AI has the potential to reshape how science is done, but that transformation should not be limited to a small number of researchers or institutions,” said Tim Lieuwen, executive vice president for Research at Georgia Tech. The funding will support at least 15 shareable, reusable AI research tools and workflows, fund 15 research projects at five per year, and provide technical support to roughly 30 additional research teams nationally, with an expectation that 25 to 30 institutions will be actively using the shared tools by the end of the effort. Training is central as well, with more than 300 researchers and faculty slated to learn how to apply AI in their research and teaching, and a deliberate focus on institutions that have historically had less access to high-performance computing. The work will be led by Georgia Tech’s Institute for Data Engineering and Science (IDEaS) and the Center for AI in Science and Engineering, building on Nexus, the Institute’s new NSF-funded AI supercomputer, and connecting researchers to Google’s advanced AI computing technology. Read the full announcement at Georgia Tech News.
FORGE AI Summit Aims to Strengthen AI Use Across Campus
The Office of Information Technology will host its campuswide FORGE AI Summit from Nov. 16 to 18, a three-day experience that moves participants from foundational concepts through exploration and into building real solutions. “Building AI maturity requires us to think beyond the technical expertise of our developers and subject matter experts,” said Leo Howell, vice president for Information Technology and chief information officer, framing FORGE as a way to put these tools into the hands of the everyday users who best understand the Institute’s processes and opportunities. Day 1 is virtual and establishes shared data and AI literacy, including policy, governance, and responsible-use practices. Day 2 is hybrid, with keynotes and showcases of AI and data in action across campus. Day 3 closes with the FORGE Challenge. The summit grows out of an OIT pilot held over the summer and folds in components of Georgia Tech’s annual Data Days programming. It is open to faculty and staff, with in-person attendance on Nov. 17 and 18 capped at 200 and virtual participation available beyond that. Registration opened Oct. 12, and pre-summit education runs Oct. 26 through Nov. 13 across three tracks: Data Literacy, AI Literacy, and an Agentic AI/FORGE Challenge Boot Camp. Details are in the full story from Georgia Tech News.
On the Calendar: FORGE Challenge, Nov. 18
The summit’s finale now has its own listing on the Institute’s event calendars. The FORGE Challenge, set for Wednesday, Nov. 18, is a Shark Tank-style competition in which faculty and staff teams prototype agentic AI solutions to address real institutional needs and pitch them in front of judges. It runs as a hybrid event with in-person attendance at the Global Learning Center, and it is open to faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate and undergraduate students. The event appears on both the Training and Workshops Calendar and the Conferences and Seminars Calendar, with registration handled through the summit’s RSVP page and questions directed to forge@gatech.edu.
The Bigger Picture
Taken together, Monday’s news points in the same direction. The Google.org investment builds outward, giving researchers at Georgia Tech and at dozens of other institutions the infrastructure and training to do AI-driven science. FORGE builds inward, raising the AI fluency of the faculty and staff who keep the Institute running. The announcements also landed as Georgia Tech and the City of Atlanta convened business, academic, technology, investment, and government leaders for Avant South and the inaugural Atlanta AI Summit, a reminder of how central the Institute has become to the region’s technology story.
What are you most looking forward to, the research that comes out of Nexus or the solutions that emerge from the FORGE Challenge? Drop a comment below, share this digest with a fellow Yellow Jacket, and check back tomorrow for more Georgia Tech academics and research news.
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