Every year, Brown pursues and wins numerous highly competitive grants and prestigious awards. This grant funding—whether from private foundations, corporations, or the federal government—enables Brown faculty, researchers, students, and staff to spearhead research projects and create meaningful change on campus and in the world.
Here are three ways that some of the latest grants are unlocking new possibilities.
1. Leading research on developing trustworthy AI assistants for mental and behavioral health
With a new $20 million National Science Foundation grant, Brown researchers will lead a national institute aimed at developing a new generation of artificial intelligence assistants that are capable of trustworthy, sensitive, and context-aware interactions with people.
Developing advanced assistants like this is specifically motivated by the potential for use in mental and behavioral health, where trust and safety are of the utmost importance.
The institute, which will be called the AI Research Institute on Interaction for AI Assistants (ARIA), will combine research on human and machine cognition, with the goal of creating AI systems that are able to interpret a person’s unique behavioral needs and provide helpful feedback in real time. ARIA’s research team includes experts from leading research institutions nationwide, as well as Brown's Data Science Institute and Carney Institute for Brain Science.
“Any AI system that interacts with people, especially who may be in states of distress or other vulnerable situations, needs a strong understanding of the human it’s interacting with, along with a deep causal understanding of the world and how the system’s own behavior affects that world,” says Ellie Pavlick, Briger Family Distinguished Associate Professor of Computer Science at Brown, who will lead the ARIA collaboration.
“At the same time, the system needs to be transparent about why it makes the recommendations that it does in order to build trust with the user,” Pavlick says. Mental health is a high stakes setting that embodies all the hardest problems facing AI today. That’s why we’re excited to tackle this and figure out what it takes to get these things absolutely right.”
2. Helping first-generation and limited-income students thrive during their time at Brown and long after
Brown’s Kessler Scholars Program recently received a $1.1 million grant renewal.
Managed by Brown’s Undocumented, First-Generation College and Low-Income Student (U-FLi) Center, the Kessler Scholars Program is a cohort-based initiative that supports first-generation and limited-income students through all four years of their undergraduate education.
Kessler Scholars are connected in meaningful ways with campus resources and opportunities, and are able to build a broader community with scholars at other schools and access unique partnerships designed for personal and professional growth. Brown’s U-FLi team supports students in each cohort as they explore academic and co-curricular experiences—ranging from peer mentoring, where older students work with incoming students, to transportation to attend a rival football game at Harvard.
This grant renewal is part of a joint $16.5 million investment reaching 15 colleges and universities from Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Judy and Fred Wilpon Family Foundation.
Robin W. Wachtler ’87, P’13 is the daughter of Judy and Fred Wilpon P’87 P’90 GP’13, who founded the Kessler Scholars in 2008. Wachtler is the president and CEO of the Wilpon Family Foundation, and her daughter, Kimberly Wachtler Steinman ’13, serves as chief legal officer.
“I am thrilled that Brown continues to be part of the national Kessler Scholars Collaborative,” says Wachtler. “The program provides holistic support to first-generation students as they work to make sense of the often unwritten rules for how a campus works.”
Wachtler also pointed to Brown’s long tradition of encouraging broad exploration as an especially strong fit with the Kessler Scholars Program as it aims to foster student growth through experiential activities, including research, study abroad, and professional internships. “From their very first day on campus, they are expanding their network and sense of possibility,” says Wachtler.