Empire AI, a Columbia University Collaboration, Gets Google Gift for AI Education
January 9, 2026
Empire AI-a consortium of 11 public and private institutions across New York, partially funded by the state-has received a Google.org grant of more than $1 million. Led by the City University of New York (CUNY), the award backs a coordinated, multi-campus effort to figure out how higher education can prepare students in every discipline and degree level for an AI-driven workforce.
Why this matters for education leaders
This is statewide scale with shared learning. Empire AI combines state-of-the-art compute access with a coordinated plan to test what actually works in classrooms, labs, and advising-across community colleges, research universities, and professional schools.
Jeannette Wing noted that Empire AI delivers advanced computing for research and uses a unique collaboration to attract funding from nonprofits and industry. At Columbia, Professor Tian Zheng will lead an effort to support a faculty cohort that designs and pilots discipline-specific curricular renewal and research training, treating AI as an urgent, cross-cutting dimension of academic work.
"Google recognized the value of the Empire AI consortium to look at issues at scale-in particular looking at how we can help students use AI to learn across degree type, different systems, and different areas of study," said Joshua Brumberg, president of the CUNY Graduate Center. "Our goal is to discern if similar interventions can work across all these areas of post-secondary educational achievement."
What the project will focus on
- Clear AI learning outcomes mapped from associate through doctoral programs.
- Discipline-specific pilots that weave AI into existing courses and capstones.
- Research training that gives students hands-on experience with AI methods and tools.
- Shared evaluation to test which interventions transfer across campuses, systems, and degree types.
Who's involved
The Empire AI consortium includes the CUNY Graduate Center, Columbia University, Cornell University, Icahn School of Medicine, New York University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the State University of New York, University at Buffalo, and University of Rochester.
Practical moves you can make now
- Audit programs for AI-aligned competencies (literacy, data use, model reasoning, tool critique). Set baselines and build from there.
- Embed AI into existing courses instead of adding stand-alone electives. Start with assignments where students analyze, verify, or improve AI outputs.
- Stand up a faculty learning cohort. Share templates for policies, prompts, rubrics, and integrity practices across departments.
- Define guardrails: transparency, privacy, source citation, and model limitations. Make expectations explicit in syllabi and assessments.
- Align to workforce signals by program. Track simple indicators: course adoption rate, student proficiency gains, and internship/project placement.
Further reading and resources
- Google.org - grantmaking and education initiatives
- CUNY Graduate Center - consortium lead
- Complete AI Training: Courses by Job - curated AI upskilling paths for educators and academic staff
The signal is clear: treat AI as core literacy, not a side project. This grant gives New York's institutions the scale and structure to test, measure, and share what works-so students, from associate to doctoral levels, leave ready for an AI-enabled workplace.
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