AI Institute for Next Generation Food Systems (AIFS) is sponsored by USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). This opportunity supports mission-aligned projects and measurable outcomes.

AIFS | AI Institute for Next Generation Food Systems AI Institute for Next Generation Food Systems AIFS leverages AI to tackle critical challenges in food and agriculture—advancing a more sustainable, nutritious, and resilient food system. Through cutting-edge research, strategic partnerships, and immersive education, AIFS is driving innovation and empowering the next generation of leaders in the field.

View recent AIFS news, posts and events Meta AI Glasses Demo + Panel AIFS x Meta Wearables AI AgTech Hackathon White Paper: AI for Food Product Development Bezos Earth Fund Grants $2M to UC Davis and American Heart Association to Advance AI-Designed Foods Teachers to Learn AgTech Skills for High School Classrooms FoodAtlas: An AI-driven Knowledge Base of Food, Chemicals, and Health Effects High School Summer AI Tech Camp Improving Food Safety with AI-Powered Produce Washing High School Summer AI Tech Camp - Week 1 High School Summer AI Tech Camp - Week 2 The AI Institute for Next Generation Food Systems, or AIFS, aims to meet growing demands in our food supply by increasing efficiencies using AI and bioinformatics spanning the entire system — from growing crops through consumption.

Food System and Supply Chain Resiliency Food System and Supply Chain Resiliency These projects leverage AI towards building a more resilient food system and supply chain, especially those that use cutting edge technologies and lead to translational change.

AI-Driven Food Systems to Improve Human Health AI-Driven Food Systems to Improve Human Health Projects in this theme develop AI solutions for identifying, creating, cultivating, processing, and distributing nutritious, functional food, with the goal of improving consumer health.

AI Infrastructure Development for Food Systems AI Infrastructure Development for Food Systems The AIFS mission is to contribute to the development of such infrastructure, and proposals will need to clearly address an unmet need and have the potential to have a strong impact on the strategic vision of AIFS, and the community as a whole.

At AIFS, we take pride in our support for over 40 research projects, all dedicated to advancing our core themes. Currently, we are actively involved in 14 ongoing initiatives, continuing our commitment to driving progress in AI food systems. Year 4 Prediction of Health Effects from Food Photos AI can help consumers understand the health effects of their food beyond Nutrition Facts Labels.

The goal is to empower users to know what they eat and how it affects their health. We will develop a "food photo to ingredients" and an "ingredients to health outcome" module. In collaboration with the Dietary Assistant project, these will integrate into a mobile app.

# Nutrition # Core AI Technologies Year 4 Targeted AI Enhanced Farmland Nutrient and Water Management and Delivery: Modeling & Simulation (Part A) This project supports sustainable agriculture by using AI to reduce fertilizers, pesticides, and water while maintaining crop quality and yield through improved modeling and precision application. It focuses on soil and hydroponic crops.

Part A covers modeling, simulation, and data integration, optimizing resource use, while Part B focuses on field data hardware.

# Agricultural Production # Core AI Technologies Year 4 Multi-Prong Approach to Achieving Digital Food Safety from Farm to Table This project tackles four bottlenecks in digital food safety across the farm-to-table supply chain by developing algorithms, data standards, and frameworks for privacy and text analytics.

Focus areas include: 1) Active learning for monitoring optimization, 2) Standardized data for sharing, 3) Privacy-guaranteed data sharing, and 4) Machine learning for text analysis. # Food Processing and Distribution # Core AI Technologies + 1 Year 4 Molecular Traits of Foods: Minimizing Costs and Maximizing Health of Diet Our goal is to deliver healthy foods at low cost to improve nutrition for all Americans.

Advances in chemistry reveal thousands of unique food molecules. This project extends ML models to include the gut microbiome and explores cost-health trade-offs in dietary choices.

# Nutrition # Agricultural Production + 1 Year 4 Exploring Potential for AI to Drive Improvements in Poultry Food Safety and Supply Chain Resilience The aims are to improve food safety and resilience in the poultry supply chain by: 1) Using machine learning to identify predictors of rare high-level Salmonella contamination in products, 2) Developing a federated learning approach for processors to privately improve safety, and 3) Modeling supply chain responses to contamination events to enhance AI-driven resilience.

# Food Processing and Distribution Meet our team of talented experts working across various domains and disciplines. Get to know the researchers, experts, and staff who drive our mission forward. Whether you're a researcher, student, industry professional, or seeking general information about AIFS, explore our categories below for quick links to the resources you're looking for.