New data infrastructure award to help scientific communities build domain-specific platforms for collaborative data science and AI

Irvine, Calif., Aug. 27, 2026 - Researchers at UC Irvine, UCLA and the University of Michigan have received nearly $9 million from the U.S. National Science Foundation to establish a new data infrastructure capability that will help scientific communities across the nation use advanced data science and artificial intelligence tools.

The award, called NSF BRIDGE and led by UC Irvine computer science professor Chen Li, helps scientific communities deploy computing platforms tailored to their needs, allowing researchers to share datasets, analysis pipelines, and machine learning models. Built on the open-source Texera system, these platforms can run on public clouds such as Amazon Web Services or on computing clusters operated by research laboratories. They enable scientists to collaborate on data analysis and apply AI techniques without requiring advanced IT or programming skills.

Why it matters

The enormous volume of data now being generated across many scientific fields, together with rapid advances in AI, creates unprecedented opportunities to transform observations into actionable knowledge. NSF BRIDGE enables this transformation by removing technical barriers and integrating deep domain expertise with AI and large-scale computing.

Rather than requiring scientists to set up complex computing systems or write sophisticated scripts, NSF BRIDGE enables scientific communities to deploy Texera as an online platform where researchers can store data, share it with collaborators, and analyze it using AI-powered tools. Researchers will be able to complete many tasks through visual dataflows and plain-language instructions to AI agents, rather than by writing code in languages such as Python or R.

Helping research move faster

"Building on more than a decade of open-source development through the Texera project, we aim to transform how scientific communities use data science and AI. NSF BRIDGE will enable seamless knowledge sharing and collaboration without requiring programming expertise," Li said.

The three-year project builds on Texera, an open-source system for collaborative data science using GUI-based workflows. Started in 2016, the system is now being incubated by the Apache Software Foundation. By using the system to make advanced computing more accessible, NSF BRIDGE accelerates discovery across many fields and helps scientific communities build shared knowledge bases for data science and AI.

A multi-disciplinary team for real-world applications

NSF BRIDGE is funded through the U.S. National Science Foundation's Integrated Data Systems and Services program, which supports national research infrastructure that helps scientists use data and artificial intelligence to solve complex problems across scientific disciplines. The data infrastructure helps research labs and domains deploy the Texera system, provides software services, including documentation, training, and technical support.

"The Texera system provides a novel platform that makes state-of-the-art AI and machine learning techniques accessible to a wide range of scientific domains. Through Texera, NSF BRIDGE can accelerate AI adoption in these fields and significantly benefit the nation," said Wei Wang, a co-principal investigator on the award and professor of computer science at UCLA.

Steve Parker, a senior personnel member of the award and professor of computational medicine and bioinformatics, human genetics, and biostatistics at the University of Michigan, shares an example: "With the support of NSF BRIDGE, we are deploying the Texera system to empower researchers in our bioinformatics domain without programming expertise to build and share flexible workflows that integrate their own data with public resources. Powered by the latest AI tools, it will bridge the gap between experimental research and computational analysis to substantially accelerate scientific discovery."

Li, from the Donald Bren School of Information & Computer Sciences, will serve as principal investigator, continuing a career focused on engineering and open-source system building. Co-principal investigators are UCLA's Wang; Ardalan Amiri Sani, also from ICS at UC Irvine; Kristin Turney from UC Irvine's School of Social Sciences; and Rui Chen from UC Irvine's School of Medicine. Subawards go to Wang and Naomi Sugie from UCLA's College of Social Sciences; Michigan's Parker; and the Research Cyberinfrastructure Center at UC Irvine.

In addition to five domains the team already worked on, the NSF BRIDGE team is actively looking for partners interested in the software system and service to help their research using data science and AI techniques.

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UC Irvine is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities and is ranked among the nation's top 10 public universities by U.S. News & World Report. The campus has produced five Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UC Irvine has more than 36,000 students and offers 224 degree programs. It's located in one of the world's safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County's second-largest employer, contributing $7 billion annually to the local economy and $8 billion statewide. For more on UC Irvine, visit www.uci.edu.