Federal Grant Award Summary

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Computing and Communication Foundations awarded the University of North Texas a three-year Project Grant of $464,978 (Computer and Information Science and Engineering, CFDA 47.070) effective October 1, 2026, through September 30, 2029. This Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site provides intensive summer training to 10 undergraduate students annually (10 weeks per summer) in artificial intelligence systems capable of sharing knowledge across domains through vector embeddings. Students work with faculty advisors across interdisciplinary project domains to create vector representations of entities appearing in multiple domains, apply these embeddings to improve prediction models, and contribute validated findings to a shared, reusable knowledge base. The program integrates REU participants with current university students through an established AI summer research initiative, facilitating cross-departmental collaboration and knowledge transfer through documented, systematic evaluation of self-supervised deep learning models.

The grant delivers educational and research training services focused on advancing transferable artificial intelligence knowledge representation. Rather than developing locked-in knowledge within individual AI systems, participants learn techniques to extract and preserve nuanced understanding from highly-trained models for reuse in visual object recognition, speech recognition, and natural language understanding applications. The program emphasizes practical AI workforce development by equipping students to efficiently represent and transfer knowledge acquired through modern machine learning approaches, addressing a key challenge in current AI system deployments.