Seeking Leaders for SDSC CORE Institute AI & Indigenous Language Revitalization Cohort
Published March 30, 2026
CORE Fellows focus on a new theme each year, with this year’s topic being AI & Indigenous Language Revitalization. Credit: SDSC
Applications are now open for the Leadership Council of the 2026-2027 AI & Indigenous Language Revitalization Fellows Cohort of the CORE Institute, part of the Societal Computing and Innovation Lab (SCIL) at the University of California San Diego School of Computing, Information and Data Sciences’ San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC). This council will help shape an interdisciplinary cohort focused on building responsible, community-centered approaches to AI in endangered languages.
"We designed the CORE Institute approach to bring interdisciplinary leaders together around complex societal challenges, and Indigenous language revitalization is exactly the kind of work that demands deep collaboration across technology, culture and community," said SDSC Chief Data Science Officer and SCIL Director İlkay Altıntas. "I am looking forward to new models of partnership that encapsulate community knowledge, cultural continuity and technological innovation as a result of this effort."
Specifically, members of the Leadership Council will serve as the founding body of a broader CORE Institute Fellows Cohort dedicated to co-developing AI tools and methods that reflect the priorities of Indigenous communities and the rights of speakers, data stewards and knowledge holders. Altintas and her team seek researchers, practitioners, educators and community leaders working in areas such as Indigenous language revitalization, linguistics, AI/NLP for low-resource languages, data sovereignty and education technology.
The Convergence Research (CORE) Institute, a National Science Foundation (NSF) Convergence Accelerator–funded initiative, catalyzes an impact network of students, researchers, practitioners, industry leaders and public policy professionals committed to engaging in research driven by societal problems that require deep integration across disciplines and sectors. CORE Institute workshops and training programs provide participants with frameworks for achieving impact through technology on the most challenging issues of our time.
Each CORE Fellows cohort focuses on a specific societal grand challenge; recent themes have included “Tackling Climate-Induced Challenges with Artificial Intelligence” and “Leveraging Data and Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Regional Food Systems.” The 2026-2027 AI & Indigenous Language Revitalization Fellows Cohort extends this model by centering language, culture and community governance, emphasizing data sovereignty, ethical AI practices and long-term sustainability of language resources across generations.
Leadership Council members will help refine the cohort’s scope, contribute to curriculum and mentorship design, and connect fellows with communities of practice that span universities, Tribal and Native nations, language programs, schools, nonprofits and technology partners. Their guidance will inform how SDSC’s expertise in high-performance computing, data platforms and AI workflows is applied in ways that uphold community protocols and support Indigenous-led innovation in language technologies.