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Udit Gupta receives Cornell grant for EcoGPT
The grants support projects aimed at cutting AI’s rising energy demands and integrating the technology into climate science.
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Anushka Pathak - Tue, 02, Dec 2025
- 16:56 EST
- 12
Udit Gupta, Indian-American assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell Tech / Courtesy: Cornell University
Indian-American researcher Udit Gupta has been awarded a grant by Cornell University for “EcoGPT,” a project designed to make generative AI systems significantly more energy-efficient.
The Cornell AI and Climate Fast Grant is part of the first funding round issued jointly by The 2030 Project: A Cornell Climate Initiative, the Cornell AI Initiative, and the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. Eight Cornell research teams were selected to advance solutions that reduce AI’s energy use and strengthen climate-science applications.
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With EcoGPT, Gupta, an assistant professor at Cornell Tech, aims to cut carbon emissions by allowing users to opt for minimally slower AI response times in exchange for major efficiency gains.
“Industry benchmarks show that relaxing output generation by small delays—even a couple hundred milliseconds—can improve overall system throughput and energy efficiency by 2.5 times,” he said.
University leaders said the climate impact of AI demands urgent intervention. “AI can be part of the solution for climate sustainability, but it is also part of the problem,” said Thorsten Joachims, the Jacob Gould Schurman professor of Computer Science and Information Science and director of the Cornell AI Initiative, noting the need to reduce emissions from both AI development and deployment.
Cornell Engineering researchers recently projected that by 2030, AI systems could release 24 million to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually and consume up to 1.125 billion cubic meters of water if current growth continues.
Benjamin Houlton, the Ronald P. Lynch dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), said AI must evolve responsibly. “We must ensure that the approach to that transformation is deeply people-centered,” he said, stressing the need to address risks while enabling public benefit.
Each research team will receive US$10,000 to US$25,000 in funding. Other selected projects include AI-driven forest integrity monitoring in Cambodia, climate-sensing systems, solar-cell material discovery, construction reliability tools, robotic waterway sampling, human-AI dialogue models for climate action, and AI-based municipal resilience assessments.
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