The C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute (DTI) revealed March 4 that global energy company Shell is the newest industry partner to join the consortium of universities, national laboratories, and companies that make up the Institute. Detlef Hohl, Shell’s Chief Scientist of computation and data science, will represent the company in the consortium.

“Shell has established clear leadership in new energy, having laid out its ‘Powering Progress’ commitment to accelerate the transition of Shell’s businesses to net zero emissions,” Tom Siebel, C3 AI founder and CEO, said. “Shell will be an important partner as DTI accelerates its clean energy and climate initiatives.”

The DTI Industry Partner Program enables leading companies from around the world to engage with DTI researchers and activities and to contribute data sets that will be available for research after anonymization. Industry partners also are encouraged to engage with Institute researchers and collaborate on research projects as well as participate in DTI conferences.

DTI recently released its second call for proposals to fund advanced research projects focused on applying digital transformation and AI to address energy and climate security.

“At Shell, we have a long history in the area of data science,” Hohl said. “AI has made phenomenal progress in the past decade and will undoubtedly be one of the driving forces behind enabling the transition to a lower-carbon world, but we recognize that we cannot solve these issues on our own. We believe that partnerships between industry, technology companies, and academia are vital to accelerating the impact that AI can have in the energy sector. We are pleased to become a part of the renowned C3DTI and to play our part in accelerating the benefits of artificial intelligence across business, government, and society.”