Two professors from Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science were named AI2050 Early Career Fellows. Aviral Kumar and Tim Dettmers are two of 25 scholars receiving support for a two-year research project.

Schmidt Sciences, a nonprofit organization aimed at accelerating scientific knowledge, presents the award to researchers who want to address global challenges in AI and help society realize the field's potential benefits.

Dettmers is an assistant professor in CMU's Machine Learning Department (MLD) and Computer Science Department (CSD), and a research scientist at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. His research focuses on empowering people to make AI their own, which he does by improving the accessibility of large language models and developing software that simplifies using large open-source AI models. Before joining CMU, Dettmers earned his Ph.D. at the University of Washington. His AI2050 project will develop agent systems that help non-AI experts adapt AI models to serve their particular domains, such as the medical sciences.

Kumar is an assistant professor who holds joint appointments in CSD and MLD. His research builds scalable and reliable reinforcement learning (RL) and decision-making techniques. He also investigates robotic learning and control, using foundation models for decision making, and developing decision-making and RL tools to build better foundation models. Before joining CMU, Kumar earned his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. Kumar's AI2050 project will reimagine the paradigm used to train generalist foundation models.

Learn more about Dettmers and Kumar's research projects on the Schmidt Sciences website.