Artificial Intelligence

Penn State Joins AI Accelerator Program

• By Rhea Kelly
• 05/15/24

Pennsylvania State University has joined the BrainChip University AI Accelerator Program, an initiative from AI processor technology provider BrainChip that offers platforms and guidance to students in higher education AI engineering programs. The program will give students "access to real-world, event-based technologies offering unparalleled performance and efficiency to advance their learning through graduation and beyond," according to a news announcement.

Through the partnership, the Neuromorphic Computing Lab at Penn State's School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) will utilize BrainChip's neuromorphic technology in its efforts to create a new type of computer that can learn and operate with brain-scale efficiency, the announcement said.

"As part of Penn State's Neuromorphic Computing Lab, we are dedicated to bridging the gap between nanoelectronics, neuroscience, and machine learning," explained Abhronil Sengupta, EECS assistant professor, in a statement. "By joining BrainChip's University AI Accelerator Program, we are better positioned to provide our students with resources needed to enable further research and study into neuromorphic computing. By leveraging BrainChip's technology with our inter-disciplinary approach to data science and AI, we ensure students are ready to develop solutions for the world's most pressing issues."

BrainChip's Akida IP neural processor is an event-based technology that the company says is inherently lower power when compared to conventional neural network accelerators, affording greater scalability and lower operational costs. Potential applications include next-generation smart cars, smart homes, and industrial IoT.

"We hope by making neuromorphic event-based technology readily available, we can give students hands-on experience with a new paradigm in computation and open fundamentally new research directions in engineering," said Tony Lewis, CTO of BrainChip. "Neuromorphic event-based computing may be a solution to the inefficiencies inherent in conventional AI computation that is of growing concern to the public. It's important that students engage early and with the right tools."

Other universities participating in the BrainChip University AI Accelerator Program include Arizona State University, Carnegie Mellon University, Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Oklahoma, University of Virginia, and University of Western Australia.

For more information, visit the BrainChip site.