Florida State University Celebrates Partnership with Amazon Web Services

By Bill Wellock, FSU News

Florida State University researcher Paul Bupe is developing an interactive intersection safety system, a project for which he must analyze thousands of satellite images, fisheye camera photos and maps — more than 1.7 million unique objects each with its own metadata.

To handle all that data, he uses Amazon Web Services, or AWS.

Bupe earned seed funding for AWS through an internal FSU program last year and accessed the tools through a partnership with FSU Information Technology Services.

Bupe recently shared his experiences at the FSU-AWS Researcher Showcase and Awards, a celebration of research excellence and an opportunity for the FSU community to learn more about the high-powered research tools available through the partnership.

 “Without AWS, we wouldn’t have been able to make this research happen,” said Bupe, who works with FAMU-FSU College of Engineering Associate Professor Moses Olugbenga on PREDISS, a Predictive Intersection Safety System project.

Bupe and Olugbenga used Amazon’s cloud computing tools for data storage, object detection, autolabeling and other tasks. Their goal is to improve safety at intersections by predicting collisions between vehicles and pedestrians with enough time to allow for interventions to stop a crash.

Through the partnership, they were able to access more computing power on their schedule to train their own models to handle millions of objects.

“In AI and machine learning, data is the most valuable thing,” Bupe said. “This gave us the capabilities that truly allowed for innovation.”

Other researchers from the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering and the Department of Computer Science who have used AWS in their work shared their experiences with fellow researchers at the event.

“Our goal as a technology provider and an industry partner is to help accelerate researchers’ work at a low cost,” said AWS Senior Leader Michael Curry. “As one of our presenters said, ‘I don’t need this to be a six-month project. I want it to be a six-day or six-week project.’ They’re trying to accelerate that time to science, and that is what this technology is helping to accomplish.”

“This partnership is a powerful example of how Florida State is delivering on the strategic vision of President McCullough by investing in the technology infrastructure that drives cutting-edge research,” said Associate Vice President & Chief Information Officer Jonathan A. Fozard. “Removing traditional compute barriers and broadening access to secure cloud and AI tools allows our researchers and scholars to move faster, design transformative research and secure the large-scale grants that empower long-term impact.”

The FSU Office of Research and FSU Information Technology Services recognized 11 researchers from across campus as 2026 FSU/AWS Research Acceleration Fund Awardees for their exceptional creativity, impact and technical excellence in leveraging AWS cloud computing to advance scientific discovery. Winners came from departments across campus: social work; computer science; educational psychology and learning systems; geography; urban and regional planning; scientific computing; health, nutrition and food science; civil and environmental engineering; and communication science and disorders. Each received up to $20,000 in AWS credits.

“Modern research is increasingly data-intensive. Whether we are talking about quantum materials, generative AI or predictive safety systems, the lab is no longer just a physical space — it is a digital one,” said Vice President for Research Stacey Patterson.

Cloud computing tools help researchers turn those piles of information into impactful discoveries.

“This partnership demonstrates the art of the possible,” Patterson said. “Our goal is simple but ambitious: we want to provide FSU researchers with a world-class environment that accelerates discovery.”