NSF awards $15 million over five years to renew UC San Diego’s TILOS AI institute

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded $15 million over five years to renew the TILOS AI Institute, led by the University of California San Diego, for a second phase. Announced on 15 October, the award is scheduled to run from 1 November 2026 through 31 October 2031. The institute will broaden its earlier focus on learning-enabled optimization to intelligent systems that can learn, reason and operate in the physical world.

The research agenda has three strands: foundational AI that can adapt and generalize; embodied multi-agent systems that act and coordinate in physical settings; and hardware methods to make AI operate reliably and efficiently across chips and computing infrastructure. The institute plans applications and pilot work in robotics, communication networks and chip design; the release describes these as research plans.

UC San Diego will continue its consortium with MIT, National University, the University of Pennsylvania, UT Austin and Yale, while Brown University joins the new phase. TILOS will also continue education, workforce development and technology translation. These are planned research areas under the five-year NSF award; the announcement does not report verified product performance or completed application results.