ISE Professor Receives $1.1M NSF Grant to Advance AI for Responsible Ocean Management
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering Associate Professor Aziz Ezzat has received a three-year $1.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop new AI and machine learning models for responsible blue economy applications.
As PI, Ezzat is leading a multi-disciplinary team of Rutgers researchers in a project that promotes sustainable economic growth by balancing ocean resources and marine system management to meet blue economy goals responsibly. "In addition to research," he reports, "the grant funds a number of exciting broader impact and educational activities at the intersection of AI, ocean sciences, and the blue economy."
For Ezzat, the award is especially meaningful "because it brings together several themes that have increasingly defined my research at Rutgers: AI and data science, spatio-temporal machine learning, complex systems modeling, and decision-making for highly dynamic systems.
"At the same time," he adds, "it is pushing our methods toward an especially challenging class of systems involving interacting environmental, biological, and human processes." The project aligns closely with Rutgers' broader efforts to advance AI and data science across disciplines, including through its recently established Rutgers AI and Data Science Collaboratory.
Developing Tools for Responsible Marine Management
Oceans harbor endlessly fascinating, multifaceted systems where marine habitats, human economic activities, and physical processes interact. At the same time, the United States relies on oceans for everything from food and energy to transportation and commerce. As Ezzat puts it, "The challenge is therefore not just to understand the ocean, but to also develop better tools to predict these complex interactions in marine systems and support better informed decisions about how we responsibly use our marine resources in the blue economy."
The NSF project will lay the foundation for computationally powerful and scientifically AI-based approaches to ocean management that can support conservation and economic development while resulting in richer insights than traditional modeling frameworks.
According to Ezzat, potential blue economy applications from improved predictions of marine ecosystem dynamics could inform offshore and marine energy development and operations, marine spatial planning, vessel operations, fishery management, conservation activities, and more.
Training a Next Generation Workforce
The project includes a significant educational component, through which high school, undergraduate, and graduate students will be trained at the intersection of AI, engineering, and marine science. "This will help build the interdisciplinary workforce needed to address these increasingly complex challenges."
Equally important, the new tools will be able to integrate diverse data sources, predict underlying system dynamics, and quantify uncertainty, in order to generate critical information for those making decisions about ocean resources. Ultimately, these methodological advances, according to Ezzat, could be valuable beyond marine applications where processes are difficult to observe directly.
"Having lived on the United States east coast for more than six years, I've also become interested in the challenge of balancing engineered infrastructure and ocean development activities with their surrounding marine ecosystems.
"Since these marine ecosystems are complex systems that can't be understood fully from a single perspective, I see this collaborative project as an opportunity to bring AI and engineering approaches to that challenge."