Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The University of Chicago received a $2.54 million Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering program (CFDA 47.070) effective October 1, 2026, with completion targeted for September 30, 2029. This collaborative research project develops an artificial intelligence (AI)-based conversational assistant framework designed to simplify the configuration of scientific computing environments on shared research cloud infrastructure. The system enables researchers to describe their computational needs in everyday language rather than requiring specialized expertise in system administration, networking, and security protocols, thereby reducing deployment complexity and configuration time on open research computing platforms such as Chameleon and Jetstream2.

The deliverables include an AI agent framework that plans, provisions, and validates scientific computing environments through integration of large language models with software tools for resource provisioning, hardware and software environment templates, and correctness validation. Key components encompass planning modules with built-in resource compatibility checks, state and error-handling modules that track multi-step workflows, and search pipelines that aggregate information from diverse documentation sources. The project aims to increase scientific productivity, reduce cloud computing costs, and enable practical reproducibility of computational experimentation by automating environment setup and verification on shared research infrastructure.