We are the NSF AI Institute for Foundations of Machine Learning (IFML)
Designated by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2020, IFML develops the key foundational tools for the next decade of AI innovation. Our institute comprises researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, University of Washington, Wichita State University, Stanford University, Santa Fe Institute, University of Nevada-Reno, Boston College, CalTech, University of California, Berkeley, and University of California, Los Angeles.
Our researchers create new algorithms that can help machines learn on the fly, change their expectations as they encounter people and objects in real life, and even bounce back from deliberate attempts by adversaries to manipulate datasets.
Featured

IFML Seminar
IFML Seminar: 10/17/25 - Sample-Efficient Personalized Reward Models for Pluralistic Alignment
Abstract: Large pre-trained models trained on internet-scale data are often not ready for deployment out-of-the-box. They are heavily fine-tuned and aligned using large quantities of human preference data, usually elicited using pairwise comparisons. While...
-
Article
Course on Diffusion Models for Generative AI
Read More
-
Event
UT Expands Research on AI Accuracy and Reliability to Support Breakthroughs in Science, Technology and the Workforce
Read More
-
Article
UT to Lead the Next Gen of AI
Read More
-
Article
NSF IFML Podcast: From Research Discovery to Real-World Impact
Read More
-
Article
NSF IFML Researchers Win Outstanding Paper Award at ICML 2025
Read More
-
Article
Turbocharging Protein Engineering with AI
Read More
Upcoming Events and Workshops
- October17
IFML Seminar: 10/17/25 - Sample-Efficient Personalized Reward Models for Pluralistic Alignment
Talk by Ramya Korlakai Vinayak, assistant professor, Dept. of ECE and affiliated faculty in the Dept. of Computer Science and Dept. of Statistics, UW-Madison
October24IFML Seminar: 10/24/25 - Learning from Many Trajectories
Talk by Stephen Tu, Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Southern California
November7IFML Seminar: 11/07/25 - Model Self-improvement via Optimal Retraining
Talk by Adel Javanmard, Professor of Data Sciences and Operation, USC Marshall School of Business
Previously Recorded Talks
New & Noteworthy
Article
NSF IFML Researchers Win Outstanding Paper Award at ICML 2025
"Train for the Worst, Plan for the Best: Understanding Token Ordering in Masked Diffusions"
Article
IFML research collaborations power next generation of multimodal AI with OpenCLIP and DataComp
OpenCLIP, the main text/image encoder in Stable Diffusion, is in the top 1% of all Python packages and has more than 50,000 git clones per day. DataComp, is the first rigorous benchmark for advancing multimodal dataset creation.
Article
The Future of Protein Engineering: Unlocking Evolutionary Insights & Stability
Danny Diaz on Root Access Podcast!
Article
Can AI Make Critical Communications Chips Easier to Design?
NSF IFML Director Adam Klivans part of multi-university team and industry team formed to accelerate AI-driven design of radio frequency integrated circuits.
Article
Smoothed Analysis for Learning Concepts with Low Intrinsic Dimension earns Best Paper Award at COLT 2024!
Authored by IFML Director Adam Klivans, students Gautam Chandrasekaran, Konstantinos Stavropoulos, IFML postdoc Vasilis Kontonis, and former UT CS PhD Raghu Meka