Stony Brook University has announced the appointment of Lav Varshney as the inaugural director of its Artificial Intelligence Innovation Institute (AI3). Varshney, who will also hold the Della Pietra Infinity Chair, is set to start his role on August 1. He will report to Carl W. Lejuez, executive vice president and provost at Stony Brook.
Varshney joins from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where he was a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering with various affiliations including computer science and neuroscience. His diverse background includes roles in academia, industry, government, think tanks, and national laboratories.
Carl Lejuez expressed confidence in Varshney’s ability to lead AI3: “Lav exemplifies the ethos and vision of Stony Brook’s AI3. He is committed to working across disciplines to find actionable solutions that will have a meaningful, positive impact on society.” Under Varshney’s leadership, AI3 aims to empower both the university community and broader society through core AI research and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Varshney’s research interests cover artificial intelligence foundations and applications, ethics and policy; information theory; statistical signal processing; network science; technology innovation; scientific discovery; and creativity. In addition to his academic roles, he serves as chief scientist at Ensaras and CEO/co-founder of Kocree.
The Della Pietra Infinity Chair was made possible by donations from The Stephen Della Pietra and Pamela Hurst-Della Pietra Family Foundation along with the Della Pietra Foundation. Stephen Della Pietra remarked on this development: “We are honored to have created the Della Pietra Infinity Chair… The Infinity Chair appointment represents a newly designed prestigious endowed position.”
Vincent Della Pietra highlighted Varshney’s potential impact: “We are thrilled to have someone as distinguished as Lav Varshney… With a focus on groundbreaking AI research, this position is intended to spark interdisciplinary collaboration.”
Varshney has received grants from various government agencies including DARPA, ARPA-E, NSF among others as well as private industry giants like IBM and Google. He has published extensively with over 300 papers in conferences and journals.
The new institute expands upon Stony Brook’s Institute for AI-driven Discovery established within its College of Engineering in 2018 which was led by Steve Skeina during an interim period while searching for its first permanent director.
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