Nelson presents on AI in research and education at national workshop

Leif Nelson, executive director of research and instruction in the Office of Information Technology, recently presented a poster on "Scaling Hardware to Advance Research and Education" at the 2026 National Science Foundation Campus Cyberinfrastructure Principal Investigator Workshop. The event brings together NSF grant recipients in the advanced computing category, along with members of The Quilt, a national coalition of regional nonprofit internet and network service providers, including Internet2 and Idaho's IRON network.

The poster highlights an NSF award shared by Nelson and Casey Kennington, Boise State University Foundation Board Endowed Professor of Computer Science, and showcases their progress in expanding support for AI and machine learning research on the university's research computing cluster, Borah. It also features their efforts to build a community of faculty thought leaders exploring the use of AI in education, with special thanks to Christina Nava and the Center for Teaching and Learning. Additional outcomes of the award include the development of a small language model, Ikasle, which was integrated with the boisestate.ai interface; a custom AI fine-tuning application developed by Kennington and student research assistants; and custom AI and machine learning tutorials created by Titus Nyarko Nde, a graduate assistant in the School of Computing.

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