The Ken Kennedy Institute fosters world-class foundational research in AI and Computing and enables their transformative use across diverse disciplines to solve global challenges, adhering to the highest ethical principles. The Institute began in 1986 and has since grown to comprise over 140 faculty members across 21 departments and five schools at Rice University. All of these members are active researchers in computing, with several in AI, who are committed to fundamental research and cross-disciplinary partnership. The Ken Kennedy Institute thus forms a nexus for scientific discourse and interdisciplinary collaboration related to AI and Computing at Rice.
Within this broad range of its members’ research, the Ken Kennedy Institute provides direct support for 12 research clusters that elevate collaborative opportunities in several core research areas in both foundational AI and use-inspired AI. The former category includes clusters in generative AI, scientific machine learning, computer vision, and human-AI collaboration, among others. The latter category includes research in AI for computational biology (both for health and for genetic design), for materials, and for urban resilience. The Institute also supports research excellence and education at Rice through large-scale proposal support, seed funding mechanisms, and graduate student fellowships.
Beyond our core faculty members, we also have over 170 affiliate members who have signed on as potential AI users, interested in finding collaborators with computational expertise. The Institute supports external partnerships in the computational sciences to promote research and innovation across the community, with notable collaborations with other institutes at Rice, the Texas Medical Center, the city of Houston, government agencies, foundations, industry, and academic institutions. All work supported by the Institute is circulated to this vast community through our newsletter, web pages and social media channels—strengthening Rice’s position as a leader in theoretical computer science research.
The Ken Kennedy Institute provides opportunities for research dissemination through a variety of collaborative forums. It hosts two annual conferences—the AI in Health Conference and the Energy HPC & AI Conference—each drawing more than 500 attendees annually from academia, industry, and government. The Institute also hosts distinguished lectures (high-profile talks of broad interest) and an AI Seminar Series (technical talks aimed at graduate students in the field). Additionally, it organizes faculty-led workshops and bootcamps, typically centering one of our cluster’s research areas (e.g., quantum information processing, distributed learning, human-autonomy teaming, genomics). These events bring anywhere from 20 to over 100 in-person attendees, and are often preserved and shared through the Institute’s YouTube channel.
The Ken Kennedy Institute’s global scholars program enables researchers from foreign universities to come to Rice for short- or medium-term visits, embedding them in the labs of our members and giving them access to our full range of collaborative opportunities. In addition to bringing such visitors to Rice, the Institute works with Rice Global to establish partnerships with universities around the world. The Rice Global Paris Center provides a venue for our members to organize multiple workshops each year that offer greater accessibility to potential collaborators in Europe and beyond.
Last Updated: December 2025