Announcing Kempner Institute Accelerator Awards
Pilot program will provide Kempner AI Cluster access to faculty across Harvard pursuing intelligence research
The pilot program offers in-kind awards for projects that require computing resources at a scale that is otherwise unavailable to faculty and typically too costly to pursue in a cloud-based environment.
Photo: Adobe stock
Cambridge, MA– The Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University is pleased to announce the Kempner Institute Accelerator Awards, a new pilot grant program for Harvard faculty researching intelligence. The program will provide Kempner AI Cluster access to faculty across Harvard who are pursuing research in line with the Kempner Institute’s mission to understand the nature of intelligence in natural and artificial systems.
Recipients of the accelerator awards will have access to the Kempner AI Cluster to undertake advanced computational research using one of the largest and most powerful academic AI clusters in the world.
“We are thrilled to announce this opportunity, which will increase both the reach and the impact of the Kempner’s computing resources, promoting pioneering work to uncover the mysteries of intelligence in the brain as well as in artificial contexts,” says Elise Porter, executive director of the Kempner Institute. “The accelerator awards program builds on a similar internal award program we’ve piloted, where our researchers leveraged the Kempner AI cluster to do groundbreaking work on everything from building new AI systems that make therapeutic drug decisions, to finding new ways to scale existing AI models for improved performance.”
Innovative work emerging from researchers at the Kempner has leveraged the Kempner AI cluster to better understand how the brain encodes new neural information, create complex AI model architectures, uncover hidden data structures, and scale existing AI models to improve performance.
With the Kempner’s new accelerator awards program, the institute hopes to build upon the innovative work already being undertaken with the cluster, expanding the reach and impact of the institute’s resources. Groundbreaking researchers in labs and departments across Harvard University will have the opportunity to leverage the powerful technology of the Kempner AI cluster, advancing the state of the art of the field of intelligence.
Applications for the pilot grants will open August 4, 2025. Please visit the Kempner Institute website to see eligibility requirements and application details.
About the Kempner
The Kempner Institute seeks to understand the basis of intelligence in natural and artificial systems by recruiting and training future generations of researchers to study intelligence from biological, cognitive, engineering, and computational perspectives. Its bold premise is that the fields of natural and artificial intelligence are intimately interconnected; the next generation of artificial intelligence (AI) will require the same principles that our brains use for fast, flexible natural reasoning, and understanding how our brains compute and reason can be elucidated by theories developed for AI. Join the Kempner mailing list to learn more, and to receive updates and news.
PRESS CONTACT:
Deborah Apsel Lang | (617) 495-7993
kempnercommunications@harvard.edu
