CSE 599M: Sustainable and Ubiquitous AI – Spring 2026

Instructors:: Vikram Iyer and Zhihan Zhang
Lectures:: Tue/Thu 10:00–11:20 am · ECE 045
Assignment Submission & Grades:: Canvas (UW login required)

Course Description

This course explores the rise of ubiquitous AI as infrastructure—embedded in data centers, edge devices, and the physical world—with a focus on its environmental impacts, AI on mobile and edge devices, and new ways AI can accelerate scientific discovery.

Topics include an in-depth introduction to life cycle assessment (LCA), the methodology used to model carbon footprint and environmental impacts, in the context of computing devices and AI infrastructure. We then cover the intersection of AI with mobile and sensing devices, followed by real-world applications of AI in health and scientific domains including materials and geosciences.

The course features lectures by the instructors and guest speakers, structured debates, group discussions of research papers, and an open-ended course project.

Schedule

Readings in bold are required and you should be prepared to discuss them in class. Other readings are optional.

Week 1 — Intro

Tu 3/31: Introduction

No Reading

Th 4/2: Intro to LCA & LCA for Electronics

Week 2 — LCA

Tu 4/7: AI for LCA

Th 4/9: Guest Guest Lecture & Discussion — Bharathan Balaji (Senior Applied Scientist, Amazon AGI Labs)

Week 3 — AI Infrastructure

Tu 4/14: AI Workloads & Data Center

Th 4/16: Sustainable Hardware & AI for Material Discovery

Week 4 — Sustainable Hardware

Tu 4/21: Guest Guest Lecture & Discussion — Fiodar Kazhamiaka (Researcher, Microsoft Azure Systems)

Reading TBD

Th 4/23: Guest Guest Lecture & Discussion — Bichlien H. Nguyen (Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research)

Reading TBD

Week 5 — Edge AI

Tu 4/28: Edge AI 1

Reading TBD

Th 4/30: Debate Edge AI vs. Cloud AI

Week 6 — Edge AI

Tu 5/5: Edge AI 2

Reading TBD

Th 5/7: Guest Guest Lecture & Discussion — Vijay Janapa Reddi (Gordon McKay Professor, Harvard)

Reading TBD

Week 7 — AI for Health

Tu 5/12: AI for Wearable and Mobile Health & Guest Xin Liu (Senior Research Scientist, Google Health)

Reading TBD

Th 5/14: Guest Guest Lecture & Discussion — Daniel McDuff (Staff Research Scientist & Manager, Google Health)

Reading TBD

Week 8 — AI for Geosciences

Tu 5/19: AI for Climate and Seismology & Guest Marine Denolle (Associate Professor, UW)

Reading TBD

Th 5/21: Guest Guest Lecture & Discussion — Gautam Prasad (Staff Software Engineer & Manager, Google Research)

Week 9 — Future Frontiers

Tu 5/26: AI + Politics

Reading TBD

Th 5/28: Debate Is "Sustainable AI" a Technical Problem or a Policy One?

Week 10 — Final Presentations

Tu 6/2: Final Project Presentations

Th 6/4: Final Project Presentations

Assignments

Attendance & Participation — 20%
Homeworks — 20%
- HW1 – LCA of Anything
- HW2 – Debate Preparation: Pick a side, then write one paragraph arguing for your chosen position.
Final Project — 60% (teams)
- Proposal (10%) — due TBD
- Presentation & Demo (25%) — in class, Week 10
- Writeup (25%) — due TBD. Write a concise, accessible blog-style post summarizing your project, aimed at a general technical audience. We are not looking for a formal research paper — prioritize clarity, storytelling, and visual communication over length and academic formality. A good model to follow is the Google Research Blog.

Course Policies

Academic Integrity

Assignments should consist of original work. Building on others' work—including papers, public code, and design ideas—is acceptable and encouraged. Failure to cite sources will result in score deductions proportional to the oversight.

Generative AI

This is a course about AI — so thoughtful use of AI tools is welcome and even encouraged. You may use tools like Gemini, Claude Code, or others to support your work on homeworks and the final project. However, you must disclose any use and take full responsibility for the accuracy and quality of what you submit.

Religious Accommodation

Washington state law requires UW to accommodate student absences due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. See the Religious Accommodations Policy. Requests must be submitted within the first two weeks of the course using the Religious Accommodations Request form.

Sexual Harassment

University policy prohibits all forms of sexual harassment. If you feel you have been a victim of sexual harassment or if you feel you have been discriminated against, you may speak with your instructor, teaching assistant, the chair of the department, or you can file a complaint with the UW Ombudsman's Office for Sexual Harassment. Their office is located at 339 HUB, (206)543-6028. There is a second office, the University Complaint Investigation and Resolution Office, who also investigate complaints. The UCIRO is located at 22 Gerberding Hall. Please see additional resources at the UW office of Ombud.

Land Acknowledgement

The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations.

Disclaimer

I reserve the right to modify any of these plans as need be during the course of the class; however, I won't do anything capriciously, anything I do change won't be too drastic, and you'll be informed as far in advance as possible.