Call for Proposals: Microsoft Accelerate Foundation Models Research Program
Submit before September 12, 2023
Foundation models are fueling a fundamental shift in computing research and across the sciences. Even as industry-led advances in AI continue to reach new heights, Microsoft believes that a vibrant and diverse research ecosystem remains essential to realizing the promise of AI to benefit people and society while mitigating risks.
Accelerate Foundation Models Research (AFMR) is a grant program through which Microsoft will make leading foundation models hosted by Microsoft Azure more accessible to the academic research community via Microsoft Azure AI services.
By driving deeper collaboration across disciplines, institutions, and sectors, Microsoft aims to unlock the full potential of AI across greater breadth of research pursuits, application domains, and societal contexts.
Details and Qualifications
Successful applicants can receive up to $20,000 in Azure credits for their project until January 31, 2024, with access to Azure OpenAI API (e.g., GPT-4, DALL-E 2), open-source models such as Llama-2, Azure Cognitive Services (e.g., speech, vision, decision, translation), and Microsoft OSS libraries such as Semantic Kernel.
Microsoft is interested in research topics in three areas:
- Align AI systems with human goals and preferences (e.g., enable robustness, sustainability, transparency, trustfulness, develop evaluation approaches)
- Advance beneficial applications of AI (e.g., increase human ingenuity, creativity and productivity, decrease AI digital divide)
- Accelerate scientific discovery in the natural and life sciences (e.g., advance knowledge discovery, causal understanding, generation of multi-scale multi-modal scientific data)
How to Apply
Please click here for more information on eligibility and how to apply.
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