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AWS AI call for proposals - fall 2021

Advancing the frontiers of machine learning

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About this CFP

AWS offers a broad and deep set of tools for businesses to create impactful machine learning solutions faster. Our mission is to share our learnings and ML capabilities as fully managed services, and put them into the hands of every scientist and developer.

AWS AI aims to advance machine learning research by funding development of open-source tools and research that benefit the machine learning community at large, or impactful research that uses machine learning tools on AWS, including AWS AI Services, AWS ML Services (Amazon SageMaker, Amazon SageMaker Ground Truth, Amazon SageMaker Neo, and Amazon Augmented AI), and Apache MXNet on AWS.

We welcome proposals related to machine learning in the areas below:

  1. Machine Learning Theory and Algorithms
  2. Computer Vision
  3. Document Understanding
  4. Natural Language Processing
  5. Speech Processing
  6. Fairness, Privacy, and Explainability in AI
  7. Edge Computing and Machine Learning Systems
  8. Recommendation Systems
  9. Forecasting and Anomaly Detection
  10. Human-in-the-loop ML and Annotation
  11. Medical and Health Sciences, Genomics

Other applied machine learning topics are also welcome.

Timeline

Submission period: August 16 - October 8, 2021
Decision letters will be sent out March 2022

Award details

Selected Principal Investigators (PIs) may receive the following:

  • Unrestricted funds, no more than $70,000 USD on average
  • AWS Promotional Credits, no more than $100,000 USD on average
  • Training resources, including AWS tutorials and hands-on sessions with Amazon scientists and engineers

Awards are structured as one-year unrestricted gifts. The budget should include a list of expected costs specified in USD, and should not include administrative overhead costs. The final award amount will be determined by the awards panel.

Eligibility requirements

Please refer to the ARA Program rules on the FAQ page.

Proposal requirements

Proposals should be prepared according to the proposal template. In addition, to submit a proposal for this CFP, please also include the following information:

1: Please list the open-source tools you plan to contribute to.
2: Please list the AWS ML tools you will use.

Selection criteria

ARA will make the funding decisions based on the potential impact to the research community, quality of the scientific content, and extent of AWS AI/ML Services usage, including AWS AI Services, ML Services, and Apache MXNet on AWS.

Expectations from recipients

To the extent deemed reasonable, Award recipients should acknowledge the support from ARA. Award recipients will inform ARA of publications, presentations, code and data releases, blogs/social media posts, and other speaking engagements referencing the results of the supported research or the Award. Award recipients are expected to provide updates and feedback to ARA via surveys or reports on the status of their research. Award recipients will have an opportunity to work with ARA on an informational statement about the awarded project that may be used to generate visibility for their institutions and ARA.

Additional information

This CFP used to come from the AWS Machine Learning Research Awards (MLRA) program. Now MLRA funds awards through ARA.

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