WEDC is assembling a “concept paper” later this month for the National Institute of Standards and Technology in hopes of landing a proposed manufacturing AI project in Wisconsin.
Missy Hughes, secretary and CEO of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., yesterday highlighted this plan during a meeting of the agency’s board. She said NIST is proposing the creation of a Manufacturing USA institute focused on artificial intelligence, adding to more than a dozen other such institutes scattered around the country.
“The potential is, between federal funding and private sector matching, to be a tens of millions of dollar-investment in this opportunity,” she said.
After the initial concept papers are submitted, NIST will choose a select few to continue developing their applications.
Hughes yesterday pointed to existing collaborations between UW-Milwaukee and technical colleges along with large manufacturers in the state such as Rockwell Automation, Husco International and Milwaukee Tool as important for the effort.
Other NIST manufacturing institutes are based on collaborations between academic organizations and the private sector, according to Hughes, who also touted the progress being made at Microsoft’s AI Co-Innovation Lab on the UW-Milwaukee campus.
“We are somewhat bullish about Wisconsin’s opportunity to get this … We don’t have anything like this in the state even though we are so heavily manufacturing-oriented,” she said. “And given the opportunities, you know, we’ve developed recently around the co-innovation lab and Microsoft landing here, we feel pretty good that we have a good opportunity to land this institute.”
The AI Co-Innovation Lab is slated to open in mid-2025, but Hughes noted Microsoft is “adamant about moving at speed” to get the project underway as the tech giant also advances its planned $3.3 billion data center project in southeastern Wisconsin.
Partners in the lab project have created a governance team including Hughes, a Microsoft representative, leadership from UWM’s Connected Systems Institute and Titletown Tech Managing Partner Craig Dickman.
“So that we can make sure that we can do everything we can to position Wisconsin for success with the Co-Innovation Lab and make sure we have Wisconsin companies in the pipeline and ready to go through Microsoft’s process,” she said, adding partners will seek to give companies statewide the opportunity to drive AI innovation through the project.
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