2015-19 Bicentennial Report

In collaboration with business, nonprofit, and government partners, Indiana University's three Grand Challenge initiatives are tackling the economic, social, and environmental problems that negatively affect our lives, our state, and the world.

Grand Challenge initiatives are having particular impact on the state of Indiana. The Prepared for Environmental Change initiative has projects that have touched all 92 counties. The Precision Health Initiative has projects active in 72 counties, and the Responding to the Addictions Crisis initiative has projects active in 27 counties. Precision Health and Prepared for Environmental Change are both active in 47 counties, while all three Grand Challenges are active in 25 counties.

Responding to the Addictions Crisis is working with a broad array of business, nonprofit, and government partners to reduce deaths from addiction, ease the burden of drug addiction on Hoosier communities, and improve health and economic outcomes.

• Researchers involved in 31 projects, Examples include:
  • Connecting primary-care teams around the state with specialists, providing training on Hepatitis C, HIV, LGBTQ patients, prison peer education and more
  • Launched the Comprehensive Pain Assessment Clinic, conducting three Prescribing and Treating Opioid Abuse workshops to train future front line workers at IU Family Medicine Center in Indianapolis
  • Trained 55 community mental health staff and providers in critical intervention techniques to reduce substance use in Wayne and Tippecanoe Counties, with expansion to eight more counties in progress

As the fields of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity have developed rapidly over the last five years, so has Indiana University’s research capacity in these crucial areas. For example:

• As a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Research and in Information Assurance Education, IU is addressing ever-increasing cyber threats. In 2017, IU used its internationally recognized strengths in cybersecurity research and education to launch the MS in Cybersecurity Risk Management, the first degree of its kind to combine IU’s highly ranked Kelley School of Business, Maurer School of Law, and School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering into one degree program.
• In 2019, the university established a first of its kind Cybersecurity Clinic to offer practical, hands-on training to help students learn to address and manage the global problem of cyber-risk.
• Also in 2019, the National Science Foundation renewed five-year funding for Trusted CI, the NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, that the IU Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research leads in collaboration with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, the University of Wisconsin- Madison, Internet2, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
• IU is home to OmniSOC, an initiative of Big Ten universities including IU, Northwestern University, Purdue University, Rutgers University, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, to help higher education institutions reduce the time from first awareness of a cybersecurity threat to mitigation, and to the Research and Education Networking Information Sharing and Analysis Center, one of the 19 industry-specific centers recognized by the Department of Homeland Security with 620 member institutions in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand.
• IU Is expanding on Its long and productive relationship Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division that includes 10 active cooperative research and development agreements in software development and artificial intelligence assurance, intelligent systems engineering trusted microelectronics, and advanced data visualizations for robust deep machine learning, among other fields,
• AI research at IU includes teaching computers to “see” the visual world the way humans do so computers can better accomplish tasks such as identifying counterfeit money or products. Other researchers study how to improve the way robots and humans interact and the uses of robots in settings like nursing homes. Still others are addressing unique AI challenges associated with autonomous vehicles, developing technologies that improve autonomous vehicle recognition of other vehicles, pedestrians, bicyclists, road environments, traffic flow, dangerous events, and potential accidents.
• IU is acquiring the fastest university-owned supercomputer in the nation to advance research in artificial intelligence, machine learning, data analytics, medicine, and more. The new system is named Big Red 200 in honor of the IU Bicentennial, and is the most recent addition to IU's supercomputing and massive data storage resources.
• Alumnus and IT pioneer Fred Luddy recently gave $60 million to establish a multidisciplinary research initiative in artificial intelligence at IU, the initial focus of which will be on AI approaches to digital health.
• IU will develop integrated curriculum and co-curricular opportunities to better equip students and faculty to address ethical challenges presented by digital technologies thanks to a planning grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. announced in September 2019. Bringing together IU and Purdue faculty, as well as outside experts, IU will prepare faculty and students to confront ethical challenges of an increasingly digital world.