Call for Participation
The NSDF Summit on Federated Autonomous Science
The AI Advantage for Collaborative Research Facilities
| Date | Monday, October 19, 2026 (all day) |
|---|---|
| Location | Illini Center, Chicago, Illinois, USA |
| Affiliation | Held in conjunction with PACT 2026 |
| Organizers |
Michela Taufer, University of Tennessee, Knoxville Valerio Pascucci, University of Utah |
Overview
Research facilities in scientific fields such as advanced manufacturing, materials science, energy, and medicine generate vast, heterogeneous, and often sensitive data that cannot easily leave their operational environments. Yet the most pressing scientific and engineering challenges depend on the free flow of insights, models, and intelligence across institutional boundaries. This National Science Data Fabric (NSDF) summit brings together leaders from academia, industry, and national laboratories to explore how federated data architectures and autonomous AI can unlock the full potential of collaborative science without compromising security, sovereignty, or regulatory compliance.
Why this summit
The national scientific data ecosystem has never been more capable. Repositories, experimental facilities, research networks, cloud platforms, workflow systems, and AI tools have all matured rapidly. Yet their ability to interoperate across institutions, facilities, and applications remains limited.
As a result, datasets remain stranded near instruments, AI pipelines stall while waiting for data access, and researchers struggle to integrate technologies developed in separate silos. This summit will focus on reducing the friction that increases the cost and limits the impact of scientific investigation.
Taking a transdisciplinary approach, participants will identify shared requirements across domains and advance a domain-agnostic vision for common technological foundations. At the same time, the summit will examine discipline-specific needs in data, AI, computing, operations, security, governance, policy, and regulation.
What this summit is for
This is a working meeting for infrastructure builders, application leaders, research facility operators, industry partners, and policy-makers across the national scientific ecosystem. The summit will focus primarily on materials science and manufacturing, energy and power systems, and medicine.
The goal is to develop and document a shared community vision that identifies long-term goals, technology gaps, partnership opportunities, and pathways for building interoperable data repositories, networks, computing platforms, workflow systems, AI services, and experimental facilities.
Format
The meeting will combine case-study discussions in three main application areas:
- Materials science and manufacturing
- Energy and power systems
- Medicine
These discussions will be followed by cross-cutting sessions on common and distinguishing patterns in data, AI, computing, operations, security, policy, and regulation.
After the summit, a public brief will summarize the community’s shared agenda, key findings, and recommended next steps.
Participation
Expression of Interest and Submissions: Complete the expression-of-interest form to indicate your interest in attending, presenting a use case, joining a panel or discussion, contributing to a working group, or submitting a position paper.
Contacts
| Name | Details |
|---|---|
| Michela Taufer | University of Tennessee, Knoxville mtaufer@utk.edu |
| Valerio Pascucci | University of Utah pascucci.valerio@gmail.com |
