Founders’ Table: NSF Grant Planning Session — AI-Ready Datasets for the Gulf South

We are excited to highlight individuals in our community that are doing astounding work in artificial intelligence and scientific data development.

Join Startup Grind New Orleans featuring Dr. James Guenther, Director of New Orleans Startup Grind and Professor of AI Practice at Loyola University, as we build the vision for a $200K NSF AI Datasets Planning Grant. This event is about turning the Gulf South’s most valuable legacy scientific archives into AI-ready datasets that fuel research, startups, and workforce development.

Whether you bring domain expertise, a startup idea that needs better data, or just curiosity about how AI meets real-world science, your voice shapes what this grant funds. Help us identify datasets, define community priorities, and set the stage for more business ventures.

**What We’ll Cover**:

1. **The NSF opportunity** — A 5-slide overview of the AI datasets program and why the Gulf South is uniquely positioned

2. **Potential Datasets and pipeline development.

3. **Student and community collaborations on unique datasets

4. **Get Involved** — Letters of collaboration, domain expertise, data access commitments — what’s in it for you and your organization.

**Why This Matters**

The we sit on a goldmine of scientific data that isn’t AI-ready. This planning grant maps the path to unlock it and the people in the room will decide which direction we go.

Details:
📍 Location: The Nieux (https://www.thenieux.com), 2040 St Charles Ave, New Orleans, LA 70130

🕦 Time: Thursday October 1 at 11:30 AM

Partners:
The Nieux

Come work through your AI idea, learn from others doing the same, and be part of a culture that values progress over polish.