University of Oklahoma to Launch 20 New AI Projects

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NORMAN, OKLA. – The University of Oklahoma has awarded nearly $200,000 in pilot seed funding to 20 artificial intelligence projects designed to spark innovation across health care, education, research and digital infrastructure. These faculty-led initiatives span a wide range of disciplines, showcasing OU’s commitment to empowering responsible and transformative uses of AI.

“These staff and faculty-led projects will move fast and create deliverables by the end of August,” said Yessenia Torres, senior managing director for the OU Data Institute for Societal Challenges, which is administering the initiative. “The researchers who are leading the projects will host office hours and workshops to invite anyone interested in their topics to learn more. The goal is to share their models so that others can replicate them."

The funded projects are:

1. “A Comparative Pilot of Manual vs. LLM-Augmented Abstraction for Clinical Imaging Reports” will receive $10,000 and will be led by David Bard (Pediatrics), Faizeh Bhatti (Neonatal-Prenatal Medicine), Will Beasley (Psychology), Arnold Kanagwa, Ashley Thumann, and Geneva Daniel (Clinical Research Data Warehouse).
2. “AI-Enhanced Teaching: A Bloom’s Taxonomy-Based Faculty Development Initiative” will receive $10,000 and will be led by Javeed Kittur (Engineering Education).
3. “AI-First Legal Education: Course Development, Secure Assessment, and Canvas Assistant” will receive $10,000 and will be led by Sean Harrington and Kenton Brice (College of Law).
4. “AI for Cost-Effective Research Workflows When Funding is Scarce” will receive $9,974 and will be led by Sam Husky (Classics & Letters), Raina Heaton (Native American Studies) and Carrie Schroeder (Women’s and Gender Studies).
5. “AI Pilot of Tools and Workshop Curriculum for Research and Instruction” will receive $10,000 and will be led by Tyler Pearson, Varun Sayapaneni, and Mark Laufersweiler (University Libraries).
6. “Benchmarking the Scalability, Turnaround Time, and Cost of On-premise and Cloud Computing Platforms for Fine-tuning LLMs” will receive $10,000 and will be led by Chongle Pan (Computer Science).
7. “Catalyst OU: A Pilot for an LLM-Powered Researcher Collaboration Network” will receive $7,300 and will be led by Chenggang Wang (Cybersecurity, OU Polytechnic Institute) and Chad Roller (Software Development and Integration, OU Polytechnic Institute).
8. “Detecting and Locating Second Mesio-Buccal Canals in Maxillary Molars using AI” will receive $9,942 and will be led by Sharukh Khajotia, Farah Masood, David Shadid and Jinyoung Park (Dentistry) and Chongle Pan (Computer Science).
9. “Developing a Model Structured Curriculum for the Use of AI in Training Differential Diagnosis” will receive $10,000 and will be led by Dee Wu (Radiological Sciences), Nirmal Choradia (Thoracic Oncology), Eric Day (Psychology), Amy Bradshaw and Mohammad Shams Ud Duha (Educational Psychology) and Shane Connelly (CASR).
10. “Enhancing Email Management through Large Multi-Modal Model Classification” will receive $7,665 and will be led by Anindya Maiti (Computer Science).
11. “Enhancing Traffic Engineering Education with AI: Integrating Advanced Techniques for Traffic Analysis, Design” will receive $10,000 and will be led by Arif Sadri, Randall Kolar, and Royce Floyd (Civil Engineering and Environmental Science).
12. “Establishing a High-Performance Local AI Development Platform: Empowering the University of Oklahoma with Secure and Efficient On-Premises LLM Capabilities” will receive $5,000 and will be led by Sungbo Jung and Chenggang Wang (Cybersecurity, OU Polytechnic Institute).
13. “Extending the Impact of the Oklahoma Data Science Workshop” will receive $10,000 and will be led by Blaine Mooers (Biochemistry and Physiology).
14. “Feasibility of an AI-Powered Learning Healthcare System for Behavioral Medicine Services” will receive $4,200 and will be led by Dokyoung Sophia You and Jay Anderson (Family and Community Medicine).
15. “Instructional Resources to Promote OU Students’ Critical AI Literacy” will receive $9,198 and will be led by Jacob Pleasants and Julianna Kershen (Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum).
16. “Predicting 30-Day Unplanned Hospital Readmissions Using Machine Learning: From Model Development to Deployment” will receive $10,000 and will be led by Bingi Arnold Kanagwa (Clinical Research Data Warehouse).
17. “Smart Data Prep: an AI-Assisted Tool for Streamlined Data Preprocessing and Integration for Non-Programmer Researchers” will receive $10,000 and will be led by Xiaolan Liao and David Bard (Pediatrics).
18. “Syllabi and Activities for AI-Assisted Maker Education: Design and Evaluation” will receive $9,964 and will be led by Yong Ju Jung and Jiqun Liu (Libraries and Information Studies).
19. “Timely Responsible AI Think Tank (TRAITT) Curriculum Development and Evaluation” will receive $10,000 and will be led by Anthony Alleman, Dee Wu and Brian Fails (Radiological Sciences), Mohammad Duha (Educational Psychology), Brandt Wiskur (Family and Preventative Medicine), Chris Williams (Clinical Pathology) and Jose Sanclement (Otolaryngology).
20. “Trustworthy AI for Research and Learning: Role-Based Multi-Agent AI Applications for Information Accuracy” will receive $9,200 and will be led by Heshan Sun (Management Information Systems).

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