UC Santa Barbara Invests in Energy-Efficient AI, Quantum Tech
UC Santa Barbara has awarded seed funding to five early-stage research projects focused on reducing the energy demands of artificial intelligence, data centers and quantum technologies. One project aims to reduce data center cooling energy use by as much as 20% through adaptive chip-level cooling and AI-based controls.
UC Santa Barbara’s Institute for Energy Efficiency has funded five research projects addressing energy efficiency in AI, data centers and quantum technology. Institute director Steven DenBaars said the grants are intended to support high-risk, high-impact ideas and move promising technologies toward practical applications.
Among the projects, professors Yangying Zhu and Igor Mezić are developing an adaptive cooling system that directs coolant to processors according to changing workloads. The researchers estimate the approach could cut cooling energy consumption in AI data centers by 20%. Other funded work focuses on reducing AI computation and token use, creating energy-proportional AI models, developing room-temperature quantum light sources and designing more efficient hardware for probabilistic computing.