Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute

08/28/2026

🧠🤖 Last call for our Minds & Machines: AI in Education Hackathon! Students wanted from The University of Utah and beyond—read more and register by the end of Monday, Aug. 31: rai.utah.edu/hackathon

08/27/2026

What could AI in education look like if students helped design it?

The Minds & Machines: AI in Education Hackathon, hosted by SCI's One-U Responsible AI Initiative, brings participants together to develop AI-powered solutions for real educational challenges—from tools that support teachers and learners to new approaches for interdisciplinary collaboration.

No coding experience is required. Participants will have access to subject matter experts, technical mentors, and AWS enablement sessions as they move from idea to prototype.

Responsible innovation is also part of the challenge. Projects will consider privacy, ethics, feasibility, community impact, and how effectively they address real educational needs.

Registration closes August 31.

Hackathon: September 15–17
Award ceremony: September 18
Online attendance options are available.

Learn more and register:
https://rai.utah.edu/events/hackathon/

Bring your ideas, build a team, and help shape what comes next for AI in education.

08/20/2026

SCI is part of a new $24.5M National Science Foundation award led by the San Diego Supercomputer Center to expand the country's AI-ready data infrastructure via the National Data Platform. The team, which spans five universities, will connect data, computing, and AI resources to empower researchers and educators nationwide. 🌐⚡

University of Utah researchers will work with lead institution UC San Diego and others to expand a national platform connecting data, computing and AI resources to empower nationwide researchers and educators.   August 19, 2026 Read the original announcement from University of California San Diego....

07/30/2026

🌟 SCI's One-U Responsible AI Initiative is excited to announce 10 new fellows, including three postdocs and our first-ever grad student cohort. These researchers will advance mental health workforce training, data center sustainability, drug development, stroke recovery, AI literacy in higher education, and more. Congrats!

Meet the postdoc fellows: https://rai.utah.edu/postdocs-july-2026/
Meet the grad student fellows: https://rai.utah.edu/inaugural-grad-student-fellows/

07/22/2026

Redtail, an AI factory for the entire state of Utah, recently debuted on a list of the world's top supercomputers, ranking No. 159 for performance and No. 76 for energy efficiency.

The University of Utah–managed system comes online this summer and will expand access to advanced AI computing across the state, supporting research, education, workforce training, and innovation. SCI’s Center for High Performance Computing will operate Redtail and provide user enablement and support.

The University of Utah returns to the global supercomputing rankings with Redtail, an AI factory designed to expand access to advanced computing across the state. Redtail ranked No. 159 for performance and No. 76 for energy efficiency on the Top500 list of supercomputers released in late June. The s...

06/29/2026

💼 SCI is hiring a postdoctoral researcher and a graduate research assistant to expand the National Data Platform with tools for discovering and analyzing AI models used in scientific research publications. This work sits at the intersection of natural language processing, scholarly knowledge extraction, software engineering, data infrastructure, and human-centered discovery systems. Apply or share!

Postdoctoral researcher: https://utah.peopleadmin.com/postings/203962

Ph.D. student in AI research: https://utah.peopleadmin.com/postings/203978

06/26/2026

Spurred by an already active wildfire season, Brenna Kelly, an incoming postdoctoral fellow with SCI’s One-U Responsible AI Initiative, wrote an opinion piece in The Salt Lake Tribune to call for stronger public health messaging around wildfire smoke.

“PM2.5 from wildfire smoke is up to 10 times more toxic to human health than PM2.5 from other sources (such as traffic)... As we begin the 2026 wildfire season, we should rethink our public health messaging. The AQI is valued for its simplicity, but wildfire smoke days may need to carry an additional warning.”

More on Kelly: https://rai.utah.edu/postdocs-dec-2025/

Read the piece: https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2026/06/25/voices-its-time-rethink-our/

“As we begin the 2026 wildfire season, we should rethink our public health messaging,” writes Brenna Kelly in an op-ed.

06/23/2026

🧬 A research team led by SCI's Orly Alter used the mathematics of quantum mechanics to develop a new AI framework that improves cancer outcomes. This advancement in precision medicine can help doctors tailor treatments to a patient's entire molecular background—their millions to billions of biological features. Read more about the study, out this week in AIP Publishing Applied Physics Letters Quantum: https://bit.ly/sci-alter

06/12/2026

🏆 Kudos to SCI's Martin Berzins for being named in Scientific Computing World's inaugural SCW75, which recognizes the top architects of scientific computing’s new era. Berzins focuses on how mathematical software, numerical algorithms, and analysis and parallel computing can solve challenging science and engineering problems in areas such as fluid dynamics, combustion, and atmospheric modeling.

Read more: https://bit.ly/sci-berzins

06/10/2026

👏 Congrats to SCI's Andrew McNutt, who recently received the Johanna Beyer EuroVis Early Career Researcher Award!

The EuroVis Annual Conference distinction means McNutt has already made notable contributions to the field and is likely to make more. Specifically, it recognizes him for his outstanding contributions in critical visualization and programming interfaces, and for graphically augmenting domain-specific languages.

Adapted from the European Association for Computer Graphics announcement The European Association for Computer Graphics this week named University of Utah Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute assistant professor Andrew McNutt the recipient of its 2026 Johanna Beyer EuroVis Early Career R...