Vol. 2 [UT Stories] 🎓UT Expands Its AI Education and Computing Infrastructure

Institutional Restructuring

• The UT System Board of Regents approved the creation of a new School of Computing, set to open in Fall 2026, consolidating the disciplines of computer science, information, and statistics and data sciences under one roof within the College of Natural Sciences (UT News – School of Computing).
• The school will recruit and hire 50 new faculty positions to meet growing student demand and advance interdisciplinary research (UT News – School of Computing).
• The additional faculty will expand enrollment in computing-related majors while also broadening access to AI and computing education for students across all disciplines (UT News – School of Computing).
  
• Peter Stone, current chair of the Department of Computer Science and founding director of Texas Robotics, has been appointed Special Adviser for School Formation, working alongside interim iSchool dean Ken Fleischmann and statistics and data sciences chair James Scott to prepare for the fall launch (UT News – School of Computing).
• The school is intended to function as a university-wide resource, enabling collaboration across fine arts, liberal arts, business, medicine, law, and engineering, not just within technical fields (UT News – School of Computing).

AI Education and Supercomputer Infrasturcture Support Through TACC

AI Education

• The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) has been delivering AI and computational science courses to both graduate students at the Oden Institute and undergraduates in the Computational Engineering program through the Cockrell School of Engineering (UT News – TACC Education).
• One course, Tools and Techniques of Computational Science, covers hardware principles, programming languages, and operating system environments for optimizing supercomputer performance (UT News – TACC Education).
• A second course, Software Design for Responsible Intelligent Systems, focuses on designing, implementing, validating, and operating real-world intelligent systems using scalable data analysis and modern machine-learning methods (UT News – TACC Education).
• TACC executive director Dan Stanzione framed the educational mission as inseparable from the center's computing infrastructure role: building large systems is only part of the goal — ensuring people use them effectively is equally important (UT News – TACC Education).

Computing Infrastructure Supporting AI Education and Research

• Over two decades, TACC has maintained a portfolio of NSF-funded supercomputers, including Frontera (the fastest academic supercomputer in the U.S.), Vista (optimized for AI workloads), Stampede3, Lonestar6, Jetstream2, and Ranch — the largest academic data storage system in the country (UT News – TACC Education).
• Horizon, an NSF Leadership-Class Computing Facility system, is scheduled to come online in 2026 and will serve as the next major resource for AI research and education at UT (UT News – TACC Education).

(Sources: UT News 1, 2)