UC Irvine says it and USC received a $2.6 million, three-year DARPA grant to study how AI tools could support mathematical discovery on unsolved problems.
UC Irvine and USC have received a $2.6 million DARPA grant to study whether AI tools can help mathematicians make progress on unsolved problems.
The three-year project is part of DARPA’s expMath program, which is aimed at accelerating breakthroughs in pure mathematics with AI. UC Irvine said the research will focus not just on model performance, but on whether AI can act as a useful research aid in active mathematical work.
Jesse Wolfson of UC Irvine is leading the project, with Aravind Asok of USC as a co-principal investigator.
The university said the team will examine how AI tools affect mathematical discovery and how to measure their impact in frontier research settings.
DARPA described expMath as an effort to speed up progress in mathematics by pairing human expertise with AI systems. The agency previously said the program is designed to push beyond benchmark-style demonstrations and toward real research gains.
The public announcement does not include early results from the project, and DARPA has not posted a separate project-specific award notice naming the UC Irvine-USC team.
UC Irvine’s announcement was published on May 18, 2026.
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