It is my honor to continue leading the One-U Responsible Artificial Intelligence Initiative (One-U RAI), which has emerged as one of the most visionary and impactful AI initiatives in the country.

Since its inception, we have worked together with the university community and beyond to advance One-U RAI’s mission and to weave AI research expertise, community engagement, and large-scale cyberinfrastructure into an innovation ecosystem for AI-enabled discovery and impact.

Over the past couple of years, this initiative has brought together an exceptional group of experts from across the University of Utah to advance its thematic areas, establish processes and support structures, and design and execute its core programs: faculty fellows, postdoctoral fellows, distinguished visitors, and cluster hires—you will find the highlights in this report. We have also established a seed grant program to advance innovative research and education aligned with the One-U RAI mission.

A particular focus of the past year was the launch of the two broad cluster hires, the first in AI for Environmental Resilience, targeting two hires in AI for environmental monitoring and modeling/forecasting, and the second in Rethinking Education, hiring faculty in workforce development and AI literacy, and AI and emerging technologies in teaching and learning. Each of these cluster hires involves seven participating colleges across the U, underscoring the university-wide nature of the initiative.

In parallel, we continue to expand established cyberinfrastructure resources (compute, data, software, expertise) that are critical to responsible AI research and education, and to make them accessible to researchers, educators, and students from across the university and the state. Furthermore, we have developed strategies and helped establish public-private partnerships to expand these capabilities and provide AI researchers and innovators across the state a competitive advantage.

In addition to driving innovation, building a community is essential to realizing the One-U RAI vision. We formally launched and continue to steward Utah’s Responsible AI Community Consortium, which brings together academia, government, industry, and civil society to promote the responsible development and use of AI for societal benefit. The consortium’s Special Interest Groups remain an active forum for sharing ideas, experiences, perspectives, and artifacts. We also coordinated community events, including a student hackathon and our second annual symposium to highlight our achievements and continue our conversations with the broader AI community.

I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the incredible community that has generously given its time and expertise to make all this possible—this includes our committee members, faculty and postdoctoral fellowship awardees, distinguished visitors, community consortium members, and event participants. You are all central to what we have achieved and how far we will go, driven by our shared mission to harness AI to address scientific and societal grand challenges.

—Manish Parashar