AI Innovation Institute

Two Stony Brook University research initiatives were awarded seed funding through the SUNY Technology Accelerator Fund (TAF), which supports groundbreaking research opportunities and helps faculty inventors and scientists turn their research into market-ready technologies.

SUNY TAF targets critical research such as feasibility studies, prototyping and testing, which demonstrate that an idea or innovation has commercial potential. The goal is to accelerate time to market for these innovations and increase their market readiness for potential investors, strategic partners and customers.

Hochul wants lawmakers to appropriate $60 million this year towards four new quantum hubs across the state as a way to propel the industry forward. She wants another $100 million invested in Stony Brook University’s Quantum Research and Innovation Hub, set to open in 2029. 

Researchers have long recognised that for artificial intelligence to truly collaborate with people, it must accurately anticipate human intentions. Peter Zeng, Weiling Li, and Amie Paige, from Stony Brook University, alongside Zhengxiang Wang, Panagiotis Kaliosis, Dimitris Samaras et al, investigated how Large Visual Language Models (LVLMs) establish ‘common ground’ during communication , a fundamental aspect of human interaction. Their new study, detailed in a referential communication experiment, reveals a significant limitation in LVLMs’ ability to interactively resolve ambiguous references, using a unique dataset of 356 human and machine dialogues.

Meet Manas Singh, a junior majoring in Computer Science with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. He is currently an undergraduate researcher in the Language Understanding and Reasoning (LUNR) Lab under Dr. Niranjan Balasubramanian.

Stony Brook, NY, February 13, 2026 — In his office lined with hand-drawn diagrams and alphabet-like symbols, Stony Brook researcher Jeffrey Heinz is trying to answer a deceptively simple question: How well, exactly, can today’s neural networks learn, and where do they fail?

Dr. Manoj Mahajan, Director of Special Programs at Stony Brook University, warned in Nancy Guthrie's ransom note search that “a little bit of research” can mask an IP. The note suggests she may no longer be in Arizona. She was reported missing on Feb. 1, 2026.

Stony Brook University, along with the three other State University of New York (SUNY) university centers, will participate in Empire AI campus partnerships with other state colleges to advance artificial intelligence (AI) research and education for the public good.