UW-Madison's RISE-AI brings coordinated AI research to the entire campus
UW-Madison's Data Science Institute is launching RISE-AI, a university-wide initiative to strengthen research using artificial intelligence. The program has already brought on 35 new hires across roles and will involve students, staff and faculty. The goal: act as guides for society as AI changes fast, and apply it to medicine, agriculture and communications.
RISE-AI is the first focus area under the broader Research, Innovation and Scholarly Excellence (RISE) program started in 2024. RISE also includes major pushes in sustainability (RISE-EARTH), described by the university as its most comprehensive environmental sustainability effort to date, and in extending healthy human lifespan (RISE-THRIVE).
Interdisciplinary by design
DSI Director Kyle Cranmer leads RISE-AI and sees UW-Madison's breadth as a strategic asset. "It requires experts, both at the level of computer scientists and also people that are thinking about energy and water use of data centers, ethics and privacy and applications and areas ranging from health to agriculture. UW really has the breadth to be able to address all of those things."
Hiring will be distributed across departments rather than concentrated in computer science. As Cranmer put it, AI now touches nearly every field, and the university is building for that reality.
Research directions you can expect
- Methods: Benchmarking with synthetic datasets to test AI systems, alongside foundational work informed by particle physics.
- Applications: Drug discovery and structural biology, plus agriculture, health, and communications.
- Governance and impact: Data center energy and water use, privacy, and ethics.
Cranmer noted recent global recognition of AI's role in protein structure prediction as a signal of where the field is heading. RISE-AI aims to add momentum using UW-Madison's facilities and collaborative culture.
Funding picture and partnerships
Research funding has tightened nationally, with several federal grants paused at UW-Madison. Even so, RISE-AI is moving forward with support from American Family Insurance and a $15 million gift from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). Cranmer expects many new opportunities to embed AI components into proposals across domains such as energy and medicine.
Why this matters for researchers
- Campus-scale collaboration: Access colleagues and infrastructure across departments for AI projects.
- New hiring and labs: Talent and facilities aligned to practical, domain-specific AI research.
- Benchmarking rigor: Shared synthetic datasets to stress-test models and compare methods.
- Broader proposal fit: Increased compatibility with funding calls that include an AI element.
Institutional commitment
Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin framed RISE as a practical extension of the Wisconsin Idea. "Problems aren't confined to a single discipline, nor can the solutions be. Audacious, interdisciplinary inquiry leading to groundbreaking discovery and education is what Wisconsin RISE is intended to spark."
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