Artificial Intelligence
Our faculty are recognized leaders in the study of systems that exhibit intelligent behavior.
This includes artificial intelligence, computer vision, machine listening, natural language processing, machine learning, and robotics. Illinois boasts a top-five ranked program and a decades-long legacy of breakthroughs in AI research and applications. Our strong, diverse, and growing AI group is dramatically accelerating efforts in research and industry digital transformations.
Siebel School Experts at Work
Big challenges. Bold solutions. See how our faculty and students are shaping artificial intelligence.
- News
- July 16, 2025
“At Illinois we are very large, so we can actually cover the whole spectrum, from theoretical foundations to applications; I don’t know of any other place that does [AI] as well as we do.”
Nancy M. Amato (PhD CS '95)
Abel Bliss Professor of Engineering
Director of the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science
The Grainger College of Engineering
Centers and Initiatives
- AI Institute for Molecular Discovery, Synthetic Strategy and Manufacturing (Molecule Maker Lab)»
- Amazon-Illinois Center on AI for Interactive Conversational Experiences (AICE)»
- Artificial Intelligence for Future Agricultural Resilience, Management, and Sustainability Institute (AIFARMS)»
- Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology»
- Capital One Illinois Center for Generative AI Safety, Knowledge Systems, and Cybersecurity (ASKS)»
- C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute (DTI)»
- Center for Autonomy»
- IBM-Illinois Discovery Accelerator Institute »
- Inclusive and Intelligent Technologies for Education (INVITE)»
- Molecular Maker Lab Institute (MMLI) »
- National Center for Supercomputing Applications»
Meet the Experts: Driving Artificial Intelligence
Faculty & Affiliate Faculty
Robot Motion and Task Planning, Multi-Agent Systems, Crowd Simulation
Machine Learning Methods for Imaging Science, Image Reconstruction, Deep Learning for Inverse Problems
Human-Centered Natural Language Processing, AI for Science, Adaptive Language Interfaces
Machine Learning, Learning Theory, Optimization, Generative Models, Sequential Decision Making, Physics-Guided Machine Learning, Differential Privacy
Motion Planning and Control
Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, AI Applications, Data Management Support for AI
Control, Autonomy and Decision Making, Vision and LIDAR Based Perception, GPS Denied Navigation
Computational Statistics, Reproducible Research, Statistics Education, Machine Learning
Social Network Analysis, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning
Signal Processing, Computational Imaging, Machine Perception, Data Science
Societal impact of AI, algorithmic game theory, human-AI collaboration
Autonomous Vehicles, Validating Autonomous Systems, Interactive Control Policies for Intelligent Systems in Multi-Agent Settings
Computational Linguistics
Computer Vision, Object Recognition, Scene Understanding
Computational Linguistics
Computer Vision Analytics for Building and Construction Performance Monitoring
Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Motion Analysis, Robotics
Computer Vision, Robotics, Machine Learning
Conversational AI and Natural Language Processing
Machine Learning, Natural Language-Based Text Analysis, Text Summarization
Statistical Speech Technology
Motion Planning, Optimal Control, Integrated Planning and Learning, Robot Systems
Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics
Computer Vision, Object Recognition, Spatial Understanding, Scene Interpretation
Probabilistic Graphical Models; Deep Learning; Data Science; Health Analytics; Safety, Reliablity and Security of Autonomous Systems; Reinforcement Learning
ML4Code, ML interpretability, testing, and debugging
Natural Language Processing, especially on Information Extraction and Knowledge-driven Natural Language Generation, Text Mining, Knowledge Graph Construction for Scientific Discovery
Reinforcement Learning, Machine Learning, Sample Complexity Analyses
Analytics with Machine Learning, Databases with Machine Learning, Machine Learning Security, Machine Learning + Cryptography
HCI for ML, AI Explainability
Cyberinfrastructure for Machine Learning, Machine Learning Systems Research, Deep Learning Applications
Systems for Machine Learning, Machine Learning for Systems
Computer Vision, Scene Understanding, Visual Learning, Vision and Language
Adversarial Machine Learning, Robust Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Cyberinfrastructure for Digital Preservation, Auto-Curation, and Managing Unstructured Digital Collections
AI for Audio; Model Compression; Personalized AI; Signal Separation, Enhancement, and Coding
Motion Planning and Control, Autonomous Robots
Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Large Language Models, AI for Science
Computer Vision, Ego4D, VR/AR, Mobile Health, Health AI, Machine Learning, Developmental Machine Learning, Behavioral Imaging
Field Robotics, Autonomous Systems Engineering, Machine Perception, Computer Vision
Machine Translation, Computational Morphology & Syntax
Machine Learning, Computer Vision
Certified Artificial Intelligence, Adversarial Robustness, Neural Network Verification, Safe Deep Learning
Machine Learning for Audio, Speech and Music; Signal Processing; Source Separation; Sound Recognition and Classification
Deep Learning for Drug Discovery, Clinical Trial Optimization, Computational Phenotyping, Clinical Predictive Modeling, Mobile Health and Health Monitoring, Tensor Factorization, and Graph Mining
Explainable AI, Fairness in AI, Adversarial Maching Learning
Conversational AI
Human-centered AI, Generative AI, AI for Social Good, Fairness and Privacy in AI
Computer Vision, Robotics
Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Meta-Learning, Robotics
Machine Learning in Computational Genomics, Ensemble Methods, Statistical Estimation
Applications of Machine Learning, Reinforcement Learning, and Large Language Models in Systems and Networking
Tactile sensing, Robot manipulation
Efficient DL/AI Systems and Algorithms, Parallel Computing and Runtime, Natural Language Processing, AI for Science
Machine Learning Theory and Applications, Optimization, Reinforcement Learning, Robustness, Generative AI, Large Language Models
Machine Learning, Representation Learning, Algorithmic Fairness, Probabilistic Models
Adjunct Faculty
Machine Learning, Automatic Reasoning
Machine Learning, Neuroimaging, Biomedical Imaging
Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Knowledge Representation, Reasoning
Seminars
Strengths and Impact
Discover more about our expertise and cutting-edge research.
In machine learning, AI group faculty are studying theoretical foundations of deep and reinforcement learning; developing novel models and algorithms for deep neural networks, federated and distributed learning; as well as investigating issues related to scalability, security, privacy, and fairness of learning systems. Computer vision faculty are developing novel approaches for 2D and 3D scene understanding from still images and video; joint understanding of images and language; low-shot learning (recognition of rare or previously unseen categories); transfer learning and domain adaptation (adapting pre-trained systems to a changing data distribution); and image generation and editing approaches based on generative neural networks. Natural language processing faculty are working on topics such as grounded language understanding, information extraction and text mining, and knowledge-driven natural language generation for applications such as scientific discovery. Machine listening faculty are working on sound and speech understanding, source separation, and enhancement, as well as applications in music and computing. Robotics faculty are developing novel planning algorithms for grasping, locomotion, and navigation; investigating multi-robot systems; as well as pursuing high-impact applications of robotics to medicine, agriculture, home care, and autonomous driving.
The excellence and impact of the AI group’s research has been recognized by a number of awards, including NSF CAREER (Amato, Hauser, Hockenmaier, Hoiem, Ji, Koyejo, Lazebnik, Smaragdis, Telgarsky), Sloan Research Fellowship (Hoiem, Koyejo, Lazebnik), Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship (Lazebnik), AFOSR Young Investigator (Chowdhary), IEEE PAMI Significant Young Researcher Award (Hoiem), MIT TR-35 (Li, Smaragdis), Intel Rising Star Award (Li), “Young Scientist” selected by World Economic Forum (Ji), “AI’s Top 10 to Watch” Award by IEEE Intelligent Systems (Ji), ACM Fellow (Amato, Forsyth, Warnow), IEEE Fellow (Amato, Forsyth, Lazebnik, Smaragdis), IEEE Technical Achievement Award (Forsyth), and Packard Fellowship (Warnow).
In the last few years, AI group members received a number of best paper awards, including: IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award (Smaragdis, 2018 and 2020), IEEE MLSP Best Paper Award (Smaragdis, 2017), Best Demo Paper Award at the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Ji, 2020).
AI group research has led to a number of startups. Derek Hoiem is co-founder and Chief Science Officer of Reconstruct, which visually documents construction sites, matching images to plans and analyzing productivity and risk for delay. Girish Chowdhary is co-founder and CTO of EarthSense, a startup creating machine learning and robotics solutions for agriculture, whose work was featured in a 2020 New York Times article. David Forsyth advises a number of startups focusing on augmented reality and image synthesis, including Lightform, Revery, and Depix.
AI faculty are playing key roles in two $20 million AI institutes recently funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The AI Institute for Future Agricultural Resilience, Management, and Sustainability (AIFARMS), led by Vikram Adve from CS, features Romit Chowdhary as Associate Director of Research, with other investigators including Alexander Schwing, Katherine Driggs-Campbell, Indranil Gupta, Kris Hauser, Julia Hockenmaier, Heng Ji, Sanmi Koyejo, and Paris Smaragdis. The AI Institute for Molecular Discovery, Synthetic Strategy, and Manufacturing, led by Huimin Zhao from Chemical Engineering, involves Heng Ji and Jian Peng as investigators.