ITHACA, N.Y. (WENY) -- Cornell University was one of nine educational institutions worldwide selected to take part in the multi-million-dollar program, which will bring 100 post-doctoral students to Ithaca.

The program, called The Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship, aims to advance the scientific revolution by promoting research in AI in the fields of science, engineering, technology and math, according to the program's website.

"We are indeed very excit[ed] about this, right? It's a great opportunity and a great program," said Fengqi You, an engineering professor at Cornell University. "This is really a very large investment and that's going to have a huge impact to broaden... the research and... education components of our institution."

The program is a $148 million program, which will help support 100 post-doctoral students study AI at Cornell.

"AI is changing society dramatically. For example, translation systems now allow us to remove barriers, language barriers. And personal assistants like Alexa and Siri... are really becoming very effective. And... we are at the cusp of self-driving cars, but when it comes to scientific discovery this is an area that... we still have a long way to go," said Carla Gomes, a professor of Computational Stability at Cornell.

Dr. Gomes and Dr. You saw this program as the perfect opportunity to combine their research fields and work together.

"I have been telling him we need to work together at some point. I've been, for over a year or you know... this opportunity came and I thought, wow, this is ideal. I mean, this is... terrific," Gomes said.

Selection for the program came together in a matter of weeks. Organizers spent a lot of late nights talking with scientists worldwide. Dr. You says we could soon see AI startup companies in the Twin Tiers.

"Immediately this program is gonna support about 100 full time equivalent posts. We are going to recruit most of them coming from other places globally, the best minds in the world," You said. So that's a direct impact, and there will be indirect impacts because once these interns are here, Cornell will become a hub for this AI research globally in the U.S., there could be start-up companies... and they could eventually have some indirect impacts to the region and to the community.

Dr. You also credited the $100 billion dollar Micron plant in Syracuse as the reason why Cornell University was selected for the AI post-doctoral fellowship.