The HBCU Professor Building an AI Institute That Treats AI as Everyone's Business

Key points

• North Carolina Central University professor Siobahn Day Grady launched the first AI research institute at a historically Black college or university (HBCU) in January 2025.
• The Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Research (IAIER) is backed by a $1 million Google.org grant and has reached more than 2,800 students, faculty, and community members.
• HBCUs represent roughly 3 percent of four-year US universities but receive less than 1 percent of federal research and development funding, according to a 2025 Center for American Progress report.
• In September 2025, IAIER and three partner universities received a nearly $500,000 National Science Foundation award to help define what emerging AI jobs actually require.
• Funding sustainability is now the institute's biggest challenge as demand for its programs grows faster than its capacity.

What did Siobahn Day Grady actually build?

In January 2025, Grady opened IAIER, the first AI research institute at any HBCU in the United States. The institute sits inside North Carolina Central University (NCCU), a public HBCU in Durham, and is designed to bring AI education to every department on campus, not just to students studying technology.

Grady, an associate professor in the NCCU School of Library and Information Sciences, spent years researching machine learning (software that learns patterns from large amounts of data) in health care and autonomous vehicles before landing on a bigger idea. Rather than running a single faculty lab, she wanted an institute the whole university could use.

That idea got a serious boost when Google.org awarded the institute $1 million. Since then, IAIER has run research initiatives and training sessions that have reached 2,800 people.

Why does this matter for HBCUs specifically?

The funding gap is stark. HBCUs make up about 3 percent of four-year US universities, yet they received less than 1 percent of federal research and development money. A 2025 report from the Center for American Progress and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund found that 17 of the 43 federal agencies that distributed research funding to universities in 2023 gave HBCUs nothing.

NCCU does not yet have a standalone computer science programme, though one is in development. That makes an AI-focused institute even more important: if you wait for a traditional tech department, you wait a long time.

"There used to be a time where people could say, 'I don't do tech,'" Grady told IEEE Spectrum. "But we're in a stage now where you do need digital skills. Now it's evolving into AI literacy."

What does the institute actually do for students?

Every NCCU freshman now completes an introductory AI course developed with IBM, covering basic prompting skills (how to write clear instructions to an AI tool to get useful results). Faculty have received training too, so lecturers across departments can weave AI into their own subjects.

Research is part of the mix. IAIER has awarded seed grants of up to $10,000 to faculty across disciplines including social work, digital archiving, and health care. One project lets social work students practise client conversations using AI simulations before they work with real people.

The institute has also hosted events with Deloitte, FICO, and Anthropic (the company behind the AI assistant Claude). Last year it held the first OpenAI Academy Summit at an HBCU, drawing 444 participants from more than 40 institutions.

In September 2025, a National Science Foundation award of nearly $500,000, shared with Howard University and two other institutions, funded work to map exactly what skills new AI jobs require, so universities can design the right courses.

What is the honest takeaway here?

This story carries the usual survivorship bias worth naming: we hear about the institute that won a $1 million grant. Many HBCU programmes without that luck are still waiting. Grady herself says funding is her biggest barrier right now, and demand is already outpacing what IAIER can deliver.

Still, the practical model is worth watching. Mandatory AI basics for all freshmen, small research grants spread across departments, and direct partnerships with employers for recognised certificates: none of that requires a dedicated computer science building. Any institution, and honestly any employer, could adapt that playbook at a fraction of the cost.