Last week, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) hosted the AI Research Ecosystem (AIRE) Workshop at The Chaminade Resort in Santa Cruz, CA. Held from October 13-15, 2026, the workshop brought together 34 non-organizer experts from academia, industry, national labs, and government to examine the pressures facing AI research today and develop recommendations for a stronger, more sustainable research ecosystem.
Working alongside CCC staff, the workshop was organized by Vandana Janeja (University of Maryland Baltimore County), Manish Parashar (University of Utah), Abhishek Bhattacharjee (Princeton University), Edith Elkind (Northwestern University), David Jensen (University of Massachusetts Amherst), William (Bill) Regli (University of Maryland), and Michela Taufer (University of Tennessee Knoxville). The workshop builds on community input gathered through the AIRE discussion forum and roundtables that took place earlier this year, and was made possible by the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF).
From Challenges to Recommendations
Over 2.5 days, the agenda moved participants from defining problems to drafting solutions. Discussion was organized around the AIRE pillars, the areas of the AI research ecosystem the community identified as under the most strain:
- Publication and peer review
- Infrastructure and resources
- Interdisciplinarity
- Public-private partnerships
The first day began with lightning introductions from every attendee, followed by two rounds of breakouts: one to refine the challenges within each pillar, and one to begin generating solutions. On the second day, an Unconference gave participants room to raise topics of their own before a breakout session focused on solutions and recommendations. The final day turned to prioritizing those recommendations and drafting them pillar by pillar.
Each breakout fed into a full-group report out, so that ideas developed in smaller rooms were tested and built on by the full group.
Perspectives from Across the Ecosystem
Kathy Yelick (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) opened the workshop with a keynote on Science in the Age of SI, setting the stage for the breakout work that followed. And on the second day, Manish Parashar (University of Utah) moderated the panel Framing the Future AI Research Ecosystem with Erwin Gianchandani (NSF), Beth Mynatt (Northeastern University), and Elizabeth Bruce (Microsoft). Together, the keynote and panel grounded the workshop’s discussions in a shared picture of how AI is reshaping research and what the ecosystem will need to keep pace.
Outside of formal sessions, an evening campfire and a scheduled networking hike in the Santa Cruz mountains gave attendees time to continue the conversation informally.
Next Steps for AIRE
The ideas developed in Santa Cruz will be synthesized into a forthcoming CCC workshop report, laying out a concrete set of recommended directions for each pillar of the AI research ecosystem. The report is anticipated to be released in Winter 2026/7. We encourage all members of the computing community to subscribe below to be the first to be notified when it comes out.
Tune in to the CCC LinkedIn Showcase Page for updates and more workshops like this. Stay connected with CCC for the latest insights, publications, and opportunities to engage by subscribing here.
This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) under Award Nos. 2300842 and 2619366. These awards support the Computing Community Consortium (CCC), a programmatic committee of the Computing Research Association (CRA). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
