2024 CORE Summit Focuses on Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Food Systems

Published October 2, 2024

 Credit: Envato

By Kimberly Mann Bruch, SDSC Communications

The 2024 CORE Summit, “Leveraging AI for Sustainable Food Systems,” will take place on Oct. 23 and 24, 2024, at UC San Diego. The event, hosted by the San Diego Supercomputer Center’s (SDSC) CORE Institute, will bring together cross-sector researchers and practitioners to explore opportunities for innovative solutions that contribute to a more productive, sustainable and equitable food system.

The summit begins on Wednesday, Oct. 23, at 2:30 p.m., with a keynote and reception featuring former Deputy Under Secretary of Research, Education, and Economics and Acting Chief Scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Shefali Mehta, who will discuss the critical role of interdisciplinarity and cross-sector collaboration in leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) for sustainable food systems. "We are thrilled to have Dr. Mehta as our keynote speaker," said CORE Institute Director Zaira Razu. "Her extensive experience and comprehensive approach to sustainable food systems and data science align perfectly with our goal of tackling complex societal challenges through convergence research.”

Mehta’s keynote will be followed by the summit’s student Design Challenge – a collaboration with the VINE, an initiative launched by the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) to drive innovation in food and agriculture. Over the course of 10 days, students participating in the Design Challenge will help the VINE imagine how to ignite change for a sustainable food system using data and AI. After completing the challenge, selected participants will further develop their design concepts through internships with the CORE Institute. Registration is free and open to the public, but space is limited.

The second day of the summit includes five interactive workshops, which will focus on defining use-inspired solutions to challenges such as short-chain logistics, climate crop risks and food waste innovations. "We are excited to launch our Design Challenge with our partners at UC ANR and welcome our workshop participants for a diverse series of conversations on how to realize sustainable food systems," said Ilkay Altintas, who serves as the chief data science officer at SDSC and is the principal investigator behind the launch of the CORE Institute.

The CORE Institute is an initiative of the Cyberinfrastructure and Convergence Research (CICORE) Division at SDSC. The institute was launched in 2022 with support from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Convergence Accelerator, an initiative to catalyze an impact network of students, researchers, practitioners, industry leaders and public policy professionals committed to engaging in research that is driven by societal problems and requires deep integration across disciplines and sectors to create solutions. CORE Institute workshops and training programs provide participants with a foundational experience to position them for impact throughout their careers on the most challenging issues of our time.

Each year, the institute welcomes a cohort of fellows to campus around a societal grand challenge. You can visit the institute’s website to subscribe to updates on the call for 2025  fellows and learn about the 2024 CORE Fellows, whose work focuses on leveraging data and  AI for sustainable regional food systems. This year’s Fellows Academy and Summit were developed in partnership with the UC San Diego Bioregional Center and principal investigators from the NSF Convergence Accelerator Cohorts on Food & Nutrition Security (Track J) and AI-Driven Innovation via Data and Model Sharing (Track D).