Yuan-Sen Ting (OSU)
NASA AI/ML Science and Technology Interest Group
on behalf of the AI/ML STIG Leadership Council
The Leadership Council:
Yuan-Sen Ting
(OSU, Chair)
Digvijay Wadekar
(UT Austin)
Andrew Saydjari
(Princeton)
Alex Gagliano
(MIT)
Georgios Valogiannis
(UChicago)
Siddhart Mishra-Sharma (Boston U.)
Carol Cuesta-Lazaro
(IAS)
Why this interest group?
Why now?
What are we trying to achieve?
NSF Workshop on the Future of AI + MPIS
Invited ~60 experts from across MPS domains
Organized presentations + breakout discussions
Challenges and Opportunities
Resources Needed
Resposible AI
Education & Workforce Development
List of invitees for Astronomical Science (AST)
Andy Connolly (U Washington - Time Domain)
Stella Offner (UT Austin - ISM / Star Formation - CosmicAI)
Yuan-Sen Ting (Ohio State - Stellar Astrophysics / Galaxy Evolution)
Eric Ford (Penn State - Exoplanet)
Risa Weschler (Stanford - Local Group)
Brice Menard (Johns Hopkins - Science for AI)
List of invitees for Astronomical Science (AST)
Aggelos Katsaggelos (Northwestern - CS - SkAI)
Uros Seljak (Berkeley - Cosmology)
Ann Zabludoff (Arizona - Galaxy Evolution / Retrieval Systems)
Francisco Villaescusa-Navarro (CCA - Cosmology)
Benjamin Wandelt (CCA/John Hopkins - Reionization)
Peter Melchior (Princeton - Cosmology)
Salman Habib (Argonne - Cosmology - National Lab - SkAI)
Balancing institutional representation and subdomain expertise
Not just AI for Science
but Sciene for AI
Cross-Disciplinary Opportunities
Domain-Specific Opportunities
We need to build trust within the astronomical community
This requires implementation efforts, not just conceptual hype
AI for Astronomy - Gaps and Opportunities
Trust will come from upskilling the community
— including staff and senior researchers
We need bite-sized, systematically curated lecture series — from the community, for the community
A series of hands-on lectures through 2025-2026
https://github.com/tingyuansen/NASA_AI_ML_STIG
Webinar
Every week
Monday 4pm ET
All lectures are recorded - 7 out of 26 so far!
https://github.com/tingyuansen/NASA_AI_ML_STIG
All lectures come with detailed Jupyter notebooks and tutorials
https://github.com/tingyuansen/NASA_AI_ML_STIG
Two semesters - 26+ lectures - covering what's new
https://github.com/tingyuansen/NASA_AI_ML_STIG
LLM as Autonomous Agents
Two semesters - 26+ lectures - covering the foundations
https://github.com/tingyuansen/NASA_AI_ML_STIG
Coding routines and NN architectures
Two semesters - 26+ lectures - covering the frontiers
https://github.com/tingyuansen/NASA_AI_ML_STIG
Physics-Inspired NN, Generative models
Two semesters - 26+ lectures - covering the frontiers
https://github.com/tingyuansen/NASA_AI_ML_STIG
Foundation Models, Reinforcement Learning
And by active practitioners and researchers in astrophysics
Speakers so far - more to come!
Yuan-Sen Ting
(OSU, Lecture 2,3,5)
Jesse Thaler (MIT, Lecture 1)
Francisco
Villaescusa-Navarro
(CCA, Lecture 4)
Phill Cargile
(Harvard CfA,
Lecture 6,7)
Speakers so far - more to come!
John Wu
(STScI, Lecture 8,9)
Daniel Muthukrishna
(Harvard/MIT, Lecture 10)
Tri Nguyen
(Northwestern, Lecture 11)
And by active practitioners and researchers in astrophysics
Carol Cuesta-Lazro
(IAS/Flatiron)
Philosophical discussion beyond AI / ML Lectures
https://tingyuansen.github.io/Philosophy_in_AI_Based_Science/
Ting, 2025, Nature Astronomy
Ting, 2026, in prep.
The Meaning of Understanding in AI-Laden Science (Feb 16)
Peer Review with AI: Promise and Pitfalls (April 13)
Philosophy x Science Seminars in the STIG Series
How do I join ?
Please send an email to AI-ML-STIG-join@lists.nasa.gov
with the subject line "Join" to be added to the AI/ML STIG email list.
Have any questions or suggestions for us?
Email ting.74@osu.edu
Have any questions or suggestions for us?
Email ting.74@osu.edu
Check out the official NASA Cosmic Origins Program website
https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/programs/cosmic-origins
AAS Splinter Session: Wednesday 3pm (Room 231 A/B/C) !
Featured Talk:
Can AI Revolutionize Scientific Discovery?
David Weinberg (OSU)
Panel: Automation of Science - where are we going from here?
Yuan-Sen Ting
(OSU)
David Weinberg
(OSU)
Alberto Accomazzi
(NASA ADS)
Stella Offner
(UT Austin)
Gautham Narayan
(UIUC)