Our vision is to develop and implement an innovative, interdisciplinary, and experience-based STEM education program that will train the next generation of researchers, science communicators, innovators, and professional leaders to tackle the challenges posed along design and innovation in the QIS and AI sectors

 

Mission

The objective of the ATTAQ NRT grant is to train Oklahoma State University (OSU) graduate students with the transdisciplinary skills needed in Quantum Information Science (QIS) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to meet the urgent national demand and take leading roles in the Quantum and AI Revolution.

The ATTAQ program will build a sustainable and robust education pipeline that aligns with OSU Land-Grant commitments and addresses the university’s imperatives in student success, the ideal graduate, teaching, and research. This proposed program is also well-aligned with OSU’s goals to strengthen STEM education in Oklahoma, prepare a high-quality workforce for the state and the nation, and advance scientific discovery and technological innovation in QIS and AI. 

The AI-QIS program is open to graduate students in Physics, Computer Science, Engineering, or Mathematics aiming to train 30 graduate students over five years. It will provide annual salary and paid summer internships. It further aims to impact an additional 70 students who are expected to participate in selected portions of the program.

 

 

Structure

The OSU ATTAQ is structured around 5 core components illustrated in Fig. 1:

• introductory transdisciplinary coursework in Quantum Information Science (QIS) and Artificial Intelligence (AI);
• project-based experiential coursework and rotation through research groups, which allows students to expand their base skill set by addressing a semester-long research question as part of a team with student and faculty mentorship;
• Development of professional and soft-skills through integrated development workshops and trainings
• Fully-Funded Internships with industrial partners working in QIS and AI
• Student-ownerships, governance and peer and faculty mentorship to create a vibrant community of learners

 

OSU ATTAQ program (see Fig 1.) is an interdisciplinary, experiential project-based and internship-based graduate education model that will train a vibrant community of researchers and communicators to tackle the challenges posed at the frontier of discovery and design across the converging fields of QIS and AI.

ATTAQ – Pathway

Research and training goals will be introduced and reinforced through our NRT training cycle, built on the 5 NRT Components described below and in Fig. 3. These NRT Components will (1) establish core competencies needed to develop versatile professionals, (2) provide innovative training in interdisciplinary science, and (3) develop the professional and personal skills to become national and regional leaders in QIS and AI. Core and transdisciplinary coursework will be carried out via problem-based learning, where students work on layered, multi-scale problems which require and develop a broad range of skills. This is capped with an ATTAQ Practicum, a semester long course where teams of students, specializing in different, complementary research branches, will work together on an open-ended, research-level transdisciplinary projects. 

 

Broad Vision

The OSU ATTAQ trainees will actively engage in experiential learning via project-based research and industry internships organized along important questions in three integrated research focus areas, which are aligned with existing strengths of core participants and across departments:  (see Figure 2)

• Quantum Sensing, Imaging & Simulation,
• Artificial Intelligence for Discovery of New Physics,
• Functional Materials for Next-Generation Hardware.

The ATTAQ program will support pathways for students to acquire experience in applying their AI and QIS knowledge to real experiments and applications in the research context and in industry through summer internship partnerships.

The ATTAQ program partners with multiple companies and agencies .

The internship experience is integrated into the NRT program and trainees will be supported via pre-internship preparation workshops focusing on technical and professional skills, student-led sessions sharing their prior internship experiences, as well as post-internship reflection and review meetings.

 

Details

Selected trainees will be fully supported by the ATTAQ program including salary, travel and accommodation support during their internships