BARI: Bilateral Academic Research Initiative
International partnerships for high-impact science

BARI is a pilot program that supports high-risk basic research as a bilateral academic collaboration. BARI’s inaugural year focuses on artificial intelligence and collaborative decision-making and sought proposals that build new frameworks for artificial intelligence agents to more truly team with human counterparts.  BARI also aims to support academic teams from the U.S. and U.K. to combine unique skillsets and approaches and provide rapid advances in scientific areas of mutual potential interest to the U.S. DoD and U.K. MOD.

The awarded team is led by Dr. Maryam Shanechi at the University of Southern California for the U.S. and Dr. Riccardo Poli at the University of Essex for the U.K..  The U.S.-based members of the research team will be awarded up to $3 million of U.S. DoD funding over three years, and U.K.-based team members will receive up to £1.5 million from the U.K. MOD core research portfolio over the same time period.

BARI is jointly sponsored by the Basic Research Office in the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense and the U.K. MOD. The project will be managed by subject matter experts from a joint Service team from the Army Research Office, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and Office of Naval Research as well as from the U.K. Defense Science and Technology Laboratory.

Click here to read the award announcement press release. 

  • 2018 BARI Team


    Bilateral
    Team     		      

    US-based team members
    Dr. Maryam Shanechi, University of Southern California (lead)
    Dr. Michael Jordan, University of California Berkeley
    Dr. Farid Hamzei-Sichani, University of Massachusetts Medical School
    Dr. Kristina Simonyan, Massachusetts Eye and Ear 
    Dr. Davide Valeriani, Massachusetts Eye and Ear 

    UK-based team members
    Dr. Riccardo Poli, University of Essex (lead)
    Dr. Luca Citi, University of Essex 
    Dr. Nick Yeung, University of Oxford
    Dr. Caterina Cinel, University of Essex  
             
    Project
    Overview    		      

    This project aims to develop a novel architecture for complex group decision making that integrates, in an unprecedented way, the strengths of human and AI team members while compensating for their respective weaknesses. To address the challenges posed by the project, the proposers have assembled a multidisciplinary team with expertise in AI, machine learning, neural engineering, computer science, neuroscience and cognitive psychology. The team approach builds on many years of highly interdisciplinary research on group decision making assisted by Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) in human and human-machine teams, as well as state of the art machine-learning technology, neuroscience, human-factors and psychophysiologic knowledge on decision making in humans and human teams.