UC Santa Barbara Receives $20 Million NSF Grant for AI-Enabled Cloud Laboratory

U.S. Representative Salud Carbajal hosted a press conference at UC Santa Barbara to highlight a $20 million grant awarded to the university by the National Science Foundation. The funding will be used to create a remotely accessible, AI- and robotics-enabled laboratory for discovering new polymers and soft materials at UCSB's COAST PCL. Carbajal was joined at the August 21 event by university officials, including Vice Chancellor for Research Rachel Segalman and Associate Dean for Research Ram Seshadri, to discuss the project's potential impact on scientific research. "With this federal investment, UC Santa Barbara will host state-of-the-art programmable cloud laboratories, allowing researchers from across the country to perform experiments completely remotely," Carbajal said during the announcement. Rachel Segalman noted that the integration of artificial intelligence with high-quality experimental data will help validate computational predictions and accelerate materials science.