Expanding the National AI Research Resource: Building Capacity and Community through Sustainable Research Pathways

Volume 17, Issue 2 (November 2026), pp. 20–25

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@article{jocse-17-2-4,
  author={Mary Ann Leung and Connie L. McNeely and Danielle Jacques},
  title={Expanding the National AI Research Resource: Building Capacity and Community through Sustainable Research Pathways},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2026,
  month=nov,
  volume=17,
  issue=2,
  pages={20--25},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/17/2/4}
}

Focused on facilitating artificial intelligence (AI) research through the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) National AI Research Resource (NAIRR), the Sustainable Research Pathways (SRP) program provides an effective model for building an innovative, interactive, and wide-ranging community of research-competent computing sciences professionals. Aimed at expanding access to NAIRR for higher education faculty and students, SRP provides networking opportunities and cultivates collaborations with related researchers using structured, evidence-based approaches built on over 10 years of experience. More specifically, SRP incorporates three principal programmatic and interactive training strategies: 1) broadly recruit students and faculty-student teams from a wide range of backgrounds and institutions, 2) establish active collaborative research relationships through an iterative and successively more intensive matching process, and 3) catalyze the development of relevant competencies and of systemic and participatory research capacities. Accordingly, SRP operates to pave the way for further expansion of NAIRR. SRP is aimed at developing skilled talent poised to address the pressing challenges facing the AI workforce. It has the potential to develop into a new and effective paradigm for expanding access to NAIRR while making significant progress in AI accessibility and providing a broader spectrum of perspectives on the development of AI models and methods. The program builds strong connections among the existing NAIRR researchers, institutions, and individual participants across the U.S., especially those who would not typically engage in NSF-sponsored AI research. SRP expands NAIRR by democratizing, increasing the variety of AI talent, and advancing safe, secure, and trustworthy AI. The program explores changes to the approaches and practices of AI research through collaborations between NAIRR projects and new and emerging researchers—-a crucial activity for future AI efforts.