TOTW

Research administrators often lean on a few core professional organizations such as NCURA, SRAI, and NORDP, to educate themselves, network with other RAs, and share their stories. Many of these organizations often provide opportunities for RAs to author materials or promote themselves through published journal articles, magazine articles, and presentations. This week’s tip provides you with their AI policies all in one place to ensure you can remain compliant while you leverage the amazing opportunities they provide. 

MindRouter and the Case for Transparent and Sovereign AI Infrastructure MindRouter is an open-source AI gateway developed by Luke Sheneman, co-PI of the AI4RA project and Director of the University of Idaho’s Research Computing and Data Services. It sits as a middle layer between tools like Vandalizer and the AI models that power them, routing…

This week’s tip introduces a simple framework for thinking about how deeply AI is integrated into your work, and what the tradeoffs are at each level.

There are a number of tasks that can be accomplished using Vandalizer. From summarizing requests for funding, verifying proposal compliance, to extracting data from documents.

Context engineering is the practice of deliberately designing an information environment for an AI to operate within. The key distinction between prompt engineering (PE) and context engineering (CE) is that PE is centered around asking smart questions while CE is about building smarter environments for the AI to work in. 

f you’re receiving this email, you’re an official member of the AI4RA Community of Practice, a listserv connecting research administrators, IT personnel, data scientists, and AI engineers from across the country. With AI evolving as fast as it does, having a community to turn to with questions, ideas, and hard-won lessons makes a real difference. 

One of the most common questions we hear from institutions exploring Vandalizer deployment is “What hardware do we actually need?” and the Cluster Configurator addresses exactly that.

This year’s NCURA Region VI/VII Annual Meeting, themed “Saddle Up for Success,” convenes research administrators from across regions VI and VII (and beyond) to tackle the shifting regulations, technologies, and expectations shaping research administration.

Come learn directly from the AI4RA team!
Want to learn more about how to incorporate AI safely and effectively into your sponsored programs office? Learn directly from AI4RA team members at the upcoming 2026 AI Symposium and Annual Meeting hosted by the National Council of University Research Administrators. We’d love to see you there!

MindRouter is an AI gateway developed by Luke Sheneman at the University of Idaho’s Research Computing and Data Services (RCDS). It is freely available for you to install and use under an open-source software license. It sits as a middle layer between tools like Vandalizer and the AI models that power them, routing requests across a cluster of GPU servers and providing a single, reliable access point for running large language models on university-controlled infrastructure.