The U.S. National Science Foundation announced a new artificial intelligence institute to focus on the speech language pathology needs of children. The need for speech and language services has been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic due to a widening gap in services available to children. The AI Institute for Exceptional Education aims to close this gap by developing advanced AI technologies to scale availability of speech language pathology services so every child in need has access.
The institute is supported by a $20 million grant from NSF and the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences to the University at Buffalo.
“The AI Institute for Exceptional Education follows 18 already established NSF-led AI Institutes, an ecosystem of AI research and education in pursuit of transformational advances in AI research and development of AI-powered innovation,” said NSF Program Director James Donlon. “We are happy to welcome this new team to the AI Institutes program.”