earlier this year, we officially launched the Global AI Frontier Lab at New York University (NYU), directly under the Office of the President. the Global AI Frontier Lab was created at NYU in collaboration with the Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT (specifically with its Institute for Information communication Technology Planning and Evaluation IITP), in order to support research in artificial intelligence (AI) and facilitate international collaboration between a growing body of AI researchers at NYU and those in Korea. together with Yann, i am co-directing this lab. the Global AI Frontier Lab focuses on three research themes; (1) Fundamental Research in AI, (2) Trustworthy and Responsible AI and (3) AI for Healthcare.
it turned out the most important and challenging aspect of creating such a cross-country research lab is not necessarily research itself but all about how to ensure researchers, that are literally ocean-apart, get to know each other and ultimately start collaborative research projects. logistically, everything was already prepared from Fall last year (2024), with a gorgeous space in Brooklyn (i can literally see the statue of liberty from the kichen area of the full floor space we have. see below) and a group of researchers (faculty members and PhD students) already making mid/long-term visits to NYU from Korea. this however didn’t mean that all these people get to know each other and suddenly become best research buddies.
in order to provide researchers, separated by the pacific ocean, chances to share their research, we created the Global AI Frontier Lab seminar series. this seminar series was designed to happen every other week on Monday in US and on Tuesday in Korea. in NY, we would gather in person at our lab space on One MetroTech in the evening, have a dinner together and listen to the talk all together in an open space, while in Korea, researchers would join the seminar via Zoom in the morning.
we just finished our spring 2025 edition of the Global AI Frontier Lab seminar series with the following speakers. we focused largely on researchers from Korea who are visiting the Global AI Frontier Lab in NY, in order to provide them with a platform to share their research ideas with their colleagues at the Global AI Frontier Lab, this spring:
- February 3, 2025 (Responsible AI)
- Speaker: Hyukkyu Kang (Postech)
- Title: Enhancing Reliability of Language Models through Retrieval-augmented Generation
- March 3, 2025 (Fundamental AI)
- Speakers: Hyunsu Kim (KAIST) & Hyungi Lee (KAIST)
- Title: Foundation model for the automatic statistician
- March 17, 2025 (Fundamental AI)
- Speakers: Heejun Lee (KAIST) & Geon Park (KAIST)
- Title: Long-context small language models
- March 31, 2025 (Responsible AI)
- Speaker: Sangchul Park (SNU)
- Title: Applications of LLMs in the legal domain
- April 14, 2025 (Fundamental AI, Responsible AI)
- Speaker: Kyunghyun Cho (NYU)
- Title: Causality gets help from deep learning
- April 28, 2025 (AI for Healthcare)
- Speakers: Jaeyu Park (Kyung Hee University) & Yejun Son (Kyung Hee University)
- Title: Global epidemiology: big data and predictive health outcomes
- May 12, 2025 (Fundamental AI)
- Speaker: Sung Ju Hwang (KAIST)
- Title: Automating AI R&D: From Research Idea to Model Deployment
the seminars were open to all with required pre-registration, and they were all generally well attended, especially considering that we have focused on the members of the Global AI Frontier Lab and also hosted these talks either in the evening (NY) or in the early morning (Korea). we are now considering an option to broadcast the talk via Youtube, in order to more broadly share research done at the Global AI Frontier Lab.
based on the success from the spring edition, we have decided to continue the Global AI Frontier Lab seminar series over the summer as well. after all, research does not take vacation even during the summer.
- June 2, 2025 (Responsible AI)
- Speaker: Alice Oh (KAIST)
- Title: Beyond Accuracy: Rethinking LLM Evaluation for Real-World, Interactive, and Culturally Inclusive Scenarios
- June 16, 2025
- TBA
- June 30, 2025 (AI for Healthcare)
- Speaker: Radhika Dua (NYU)
- July 14, 2025 (Responsible AI)
- Speaker: Haneul Yoo (KAIST)
- July 28, 2025 (Fundamental AI)
- Speaker: Divyam Madaan (NYU)
- August 11, 2025 (AI for Healthcare)
- Speaker: Lavender Jiang (NYU)
- August 25, 2025 (Responsible AI)
- Speaker: JinYeong Bak (SKKU)
i’m already very excited to hear from these speakers this summer. hopefully, you all are, too!
of course, i must thank Stephanie Min, Patrick Browne, Michael Picheney and Karin Pavese who are working with me days and nights, to successfully run the Global AI Frontier Lab.