Special Programs

Full Proposals due May 24, 2024 midnight Central Time

The AICE Center is calling for proposals for the second funding round, 2024-2025 academic year. In this phase, the center will support 3-5 sponsored projects. Each funding project will support a PhD research assistant and 2-4 weeks of summer salary for principal investigators (PIs). Each selected project will then engage with research scientists from Amazon to collaborate and jointly advise PhD students.

Topics of interest would include but are not limited to those below. Please feel free to bring your unique viewpoint and expertise to these topics:

• Large Language Models (LLMs)
• Vision-Language
• Search and Retrieval
• Efficient Generative AI
• Responsible Generative AI

Specific information regarding the proposal topics can be found in the formal Call for Proposals: https://ws.engr.illinois.edu/sitemanager/getfile.asp?id=6572

Submissions should not reference either Amazon or Alexa, nor speculate about how the research might be applied to current or future Amazon products, services, business models or needs. Proposals should focus on the science.

Multi-submissions will need to fill out multiple applications.

Full Proposal Format: The proposal format is single-spaced, 11-point font or larger, with no less than 0.5-inch margins. The proposal should include the following content:

• Full names and email addresses of all PIs involved.
• Project description (3 pages max), including the focus topic area of proposal, title, an executive summary, technical description of the project, expected deliverables/outcomes, milestones and what plans exist for open sourcing of data or results.
• List of all university background IP (unlimited)
• References (unlimited)
• Requested budget (1 page max), use format shown in Section 8 of the CFP (linked above)
• Biographies of the PIs (up to 3 pages per PI in NSF Format)

Eligibility

Full-time tenure-track, research-track and teaching faculty members at Illinois are eligible to submit proposals as PIs. Note: Faculty members that will be Amazon Scholars in AY 2024-2025 are eligible to submit proposals but must adhere to the university conflict of interest policies and procedures.

PI Requirements

• PI with work with department business office to complete a budget table.
• The PI and his/her unit are fully responsible for any overages if the funding request is calculated incorrectly
• The PI is responsible for consulting with the relevant offices and meeting all requirements