Address any questions or comments on the content of this update to the Faculty Senate Chair at a Senate meeting or via email at faculty-senate@buffalo.edu. Suggestions of items to include in future Updates are welcome.

I hope the beginning of the academic year has gone well for you! A new era at UB has begun with the arrival of President Genco. The Faculty Senate looks forward to working closely with her as she formulates plans for UB’s future.

This update focuses on four issues of concern to faculty:

• Upcoming Faculty Senate business
• SUNY opportunities
• Survey of campus opinion on a trial Flock camera program
• Comments from the Chief Sustainability Officer on our AI initiatives

The Faculty Senate meets on September 15 at 3 pm in the Buffalo Room (Capen 10) and via Zoom. All are welcome to attend. Request the Zoom link by emailing faculty-senate@buffalo.edu.

The agenda for September 15 includes a report by Venu Govindaraju, Vice President for Research and Economic Development, on AI governance and policy, and a report by Provost Scott Weber on enrollment and retention issues.

• SUNY System Administration is seeking 100 faculty members to participate in a systemwide community of practice that will provide a mechanism for professional learning and cross-campus collaboration to support faculty to integrate discipline-specific AI-enabled skills in course-level student learning outcomes. The call for applications is attached, and this call along with the link to the application are available at Supporting Faculty in the Responsible Use of AI - SUNY System. Applications are due by September 25, 2026. Participating faculty will receive a stipend of $2,500, following the completion of work.
• SUNY’s Conversations in the Disciplines program offers funding to scholarly initiatives that bring together participants from several SUNY campuses. The deadline for applications is January 29, 2027. See the guidelines via this link.
• Three of UB’s seats in the SUNY University Faculty Senate will be up for election later this fall, for terms to begin July 1, 2027. Anyone interested in running is welcome to contact me to learn more about what it is like to serve.

Members of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee called my attention to this survey. Please fill it out if you have thoughts on this issue. License Plate Readers Survey

Last year the Faculty Senate dissolved our Campus Environment and Sustainability Committee, a decision that some regret. I hope those interested in reviving it develop a plan—I would be happy to help recreate this committee if there are enough committed colleagues willing to join it (and one willing to chair it). Over the summer, I met with Ryan McPherson, UB’s Chief Sustainability Officer, to talk about the work of his office. Among the topics we discussed was how our AI initiatives affect our sustainability goals. He told me I could share his statement below with faculty:

Here are five key areas in ways we are looking to help us integrate AI into our sustainability objectives:

• We can look to AI to help us develop and advance solutions to advance climate actions like we are doing here at UB through the Empire AI initiative
• There are three general ways AI can be leveraged for good in taking climate action:
  • Better measuring the emissions and carbon we are producing and verifying carbon accounting as well as climate risks
  • Optimizing efficiency around smart grids, renewables, conservation, battery storage, precision agriculture, industrial decarbonization, mobility and so much more
  • And Prediction and Resilience with extreme weather forecasting, disaster and early warning systems and water and drought management
• There are many who suggest that AI will actually end up dramatically decreasing carbon emissions when you factor in the solutions and efficiencies it will create when compared against its operational carbon footprint
• This was a study released earlier this year from London School of Economics that claimed global emissions from the food power and mobility sectors could be decreased by 5 billion tons alone due to AI.
• However, experts are divided on the issue of whether AI will in fact improve sustainability
• Here are some more points on this from climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe:
  • Today, as this Nature Climate Action perspective explains in detail, there are numerous ways that AI can help accelerate the low-carbon transition, if used wisely and well. This includes optimizing power grids, catalyzing behavioural change, and improving climate and policy modeling. In fact, the authors calculate that emissions reductions in just three sectors—power, meat, and dairy—would “more than offset” all emissions created by the AI itself (and obviously would be even better, if AI were powered by 100% renewables – which it should be!).
  • I’ve written earlier about how engaging with an AI chatbot on the topic of climate change shifted people’s views towards the scientific consensus. For more examples of how AI can be used well and for good causes, such as improving climate decisions and protecting nature, I highly recommend this article.

• For the past 7 years the University at Buffalo has received its electricity from a combination of onsite solar, offsite solar and renewable energy certificates thereby fueling the full electricity demand of the campus from clean energy sources. This practice will continue into the future as part of our work to achieve climate neutrality
• The increase in electricity use from Empire AI (between 71% and 21%) will also be covered through renewable electricity generation or REC purchase
• In short, the electricity used to power Empire AI will come from renewable and clean sources with no carbon emissions

• A key strategy in the university’s North Campus Clean Energy Master Plan is capturing the massive amount of waste heat generated by the chips that fuel Empire AI
• This heat recovery will be injected into the University’s thermal energy network which will then be moved across the entire campus (through the Baker Utility Plant).
• This strategy reduces the overall amount of geothermal wellfields by over half, creates substantial savings and limits campus construction disruption
• The University recently received $62M to implement phase I of the Clean Energy Master Plan which includes the construction of a piping system that will connect Empire AI to the Baker Utility Plant (this is currently in design)

• AI workloads will run on the latest generation of highly energy-efficient Nvidia processors, which deliver substantially more computation per unit of energy than prior or competing technologies. These systems employ direct liquid cooling, a method that is significantly more efficient and water-conserving than the traditional air-cooled approaches used in older data centers.

• Empire AI uses “Dry Cooler” technology to cool the servers through a thermal energy loop
• This technology and Buffalo’s cooler climate allow us to only have to use evaporation practices two months out of the year thus providing minimal water loss compared with other data center/AI water usage