STARKVILLE – Mississippi State University was selected as one of more than 14 universities and colleges in the Southeast to help spearhead regional artificial intelligence research efforts.

The White House, in a Thursday press release, announced the creation of the Southeast Regional Computing Consortium as part of $6 billion in scientific research and infrastructure investments unveiled at its Science: A New Golden Age Summit.

“These initiatives will equip scientists with the tools to harness (system instructions)-driven scientific revolution, support the best and brightest American STEM students and early-career scientists, revive the pursuit of ambitious national scientific missions, and encourage the creation of new scientific institutions,” the press release said.

The consortium includes universities from 10 states that have already invested in artificial intelligence infrastructure, the press release said, that can be used in shared targeted research by founding partners like the University of Alabama, Vanderbilt and Louisiana State University.

Sid Salter, MSU’s vice president for strategic communication and director of public affairs, said the university’s proactive efforts to address AI at the state level alongside existing infrastructure made MSU a strong candidate for the partnership.

“I think our supercomputing capability played a role, but I think more to the point, Mississippi State’s the first university in Mississippi to offer a degree in this field, and we were already through the … Mississippi Artificial Intelligence Network … engaged in advising the state,” Salter told The Dispatch Friday. “And we had roles to play in that … and so we had expertise in that field, and it was a natural fit.”

One of those recent investments included $2.2 million awarded by the state in June 2025 to develop an endowment for AI workforce and research initiatives and a new Data Center Construction graduate certificate program.

Just five months later, the university also named Julie Jordan as MSU’s senior adviser for AI and data governance, a newly created position at the university to spearhead AI initiatives.

Alongside those efforts, MSU also already has two National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-funded supercomputers on its campus that are among the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world, according to an MSU press release.

Scott Willard, MSU interim vice president for research and economic development, said in MSU’s Thursday press release that consortium initiatives will advance the scientific frontier of AI and its future for the Southeast region.

“We are confident that this consortium will foster a new age of scientific discovery and research translation that will maintain U.S. dominance in the global innovation economy,” Willard said.

Salter said that while the partner agencies are still working through what those initiatives will look like in practice, he imagines they could look similar to other interuniversity efforts MSU has partnered with previously.

“That’s part of what we’re waiting to get additional direction on,” Salter said. “But if it goes the route of other academic partnerships that we’re a part of, if you look at these innovation labs that have been … (at) other institutions around the SEC footprint, we were able to fill a role based on the scientific research areas where we’re already demonstrating excellence. And so I think that will be part of it. But I do think that the White House expressed … that they had a vision for what this consortium produces. We just are awaiting additional information before we get too far down that road.”

Salter said there are also hopes that initiatives the consortium focuses on will bring additional AI-specific federal, state and private grant funding similar to the state grant funding MSU received to jumpstart its Data Center Construction certificate program in June 2025.

“I do think this would give our administration the opportunity to lay the groundwork for increased opportunity in these areas, and I think that dovetails with what we’ve been doing the last several years,” Salter said.