Driving AI in Plasma Physics: building scientific collaboration

Artificial Intelligence methods are becoming essential plasma physics tools.  The methods have been developed by early adopters in pockets of excellence across our discipline.  Now, we need a deliberate strategy to steer research priorities.  This includes not just physics research, but also machine learning algorithm work, new computing hardware, and new organizational structures to bring these disciplines together.  We present here a model for collaborative research in the field of AI for science.  We will describe new partnerships aimed a bringing together academic, national laboratory, and industrial partners to work on focused challenge problems.  We will also present a view of the new AI Center of Excellence at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that plans stimulate and enable this transformational work.  Finally, we will present some important challenge problems, the collaborative partners, and initial results.