Happy second birthday, VALIANT!

This month, we celebrate two years of shared discovery. From AI Summer School to Discover AI, and through the more than three-score seminars, workshops, BrainHacks, student gatherings, and celebrations in between, VALIANT has grown into a vibrant community of people who are learning together, building together, and imagining what comes next.

In just two years, we have spent more than 10,000 total hours together. That number reflects more than presence. It reflects curiosity, trust, shared effort, and the growing belief that AI can be a nexus for researchers, students, clinicians, engineers, artists, humanists, entrepreneurs, and community partners.

Your engagement also speaks to the remarkable moment we are living in. Nashville and Tennessee are investing deeply in AI, high technology, entrepreneurship, and talent development. The opportunities for our students, trainees, graduates, researchers, and partners are expanding rapidly. We are grateful to our industry affiliates for helping us advance discovery while creating new interdisciplinary pathways for collaboration.

Across VALIANT, I continue to be inspired by our community’s ingenuity. Our members are not only advancing scientific discovery, but also thinking seriously about translation, impact, and the movement of ideas into the world. The steady pace of disclosures to Vanderbilt’s Center for Technology Transfer and Commercialization (CTTC) shows that this community is pairing creativity with action.

As we enter our third year, I see deeper connections ahead among research, trainee development, industry partnership, and Nashville’s entrepreneurial community. We are expanding opportunities to welcome people who are new to AI, including scholars in engineering and computing as well as those in fields where these tools have not traditionally been central.

AI is changing what is possible, but perhaps more importantly, it is changing how we frame problems. I look forward to being continually surprised by the ways this community uses those shifts to clarify our goals, expand our imagination, and build toward better futures.

I’ll be the first to admit that these are challenging times, but moments of transition rarely come without uncertainty. VALIANT was created for this kind of moment: to bring people together across disciplines, to face complex problems with humility and ambition, and to thrive in discovery.

I am grateful to be on this journey with y’all. Congratulations on two remarkable years. Now, onward to year three and beyond. Our adventure is just beginning.