Northeastern Joins New Global AI Alliance as a Founding Member

Northeastern joined the AI-RAN Alliance and is the only U.S. university and research institute to serve as a founding member. The alliance will examine and study emerging technology and develop new AI-based mobile networking systems that could shorten development times, increase data speeds, and enable new mobile experiences for consumers.


This article originally appeared on Northeastern Global News. It was published by Cesareo Contreras. Main photo: The AI-RAN Alliance was officially announced Monday at Mobile World Congress, a telecom industry conference. AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A.

New alliance will lean on Northeastern researchers while using AI to revolutionize mobile networking

A new alliance will leverage Northeastern’s research on radio access network technologies as it aims to utilize the power of artificial intelligence to transform mobile networking.

The formation of the AI-RAN Alliance was announced Monday, Feb. 26, at Mobile World Congress, a major telecommunications conference in Barcelona, Spain.

Tommaso Melodia, Director of the WIoT lab, poses for a portrait in the ISEC building. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

Northeastern University is the only U.S. university and research institute to be a founding member of the alliance. The initiative is being led by NVIDIA, SoftBank and ARM, three large corporations that are investing heavily in the development of AI technologies. Other founding members include Amazon, Microsoft, T-Mobile, Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and Deepsig.

The aim of this alliance is to examine and study the emerging technology and develop new AI-based mobile networking systems that could shorten development times, increase data speeds and enable new mobile experiences for consumers, says Tommaso Melodia, a Northeastern professor of electrical and computer engineering and the director of the Institute for The Wireless Internet of Things.

“The general idea is that AI is changing a lot in the tech world,” says Melodia. “It’s been driving a lot of new capabilities across various industries. Certainly, in the telecom sector there’s been growth, but the sector still needs to unlock that potential.”

Read full story at Northeastern Global News

Related Faculty: Tommaso Melodia

Related Departments:Electrical & Computer Engineering