School of Computing faculty contributing to seven of the eight seed grants for interdisciplinary AI research

by Susan Ambrosetti

The University of Georgia’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IAI) has announced eight new seed grants designed to accelerate interdisciplinary research across campus, with the School of Computing contributing to seven of the eight funded projects. With faculty leading or co-leading initiatives across nearly every thematic area, the School of Computing continues to play a central role in advancing UGA’s vision for AI-driven innovation.

These seed grants, supported by the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and the Provost, are intended to spark high-impact research that can grow into major externally funded projects. “Artificial intelligence is a powerful catalyst for innovation that transcends traditional academic boundaries,” said Benjamin C. Ayers, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost. “By investing in these interdisciplinary seed grants, UGA is empowering faculty to develop AI-driven solutions that address critical needs in a wide range of fields, including healthcare, agriculture, and human development.”

This year’s funded projects align with UGA’s five convergence themes:
AI in Education, Ethics of AI, AI and the Future of Health & Work, AI for 3F (Farm, Food, Forest), and AI for Cyber and Societal Security. Across these themes, School of Computing faculty are leading breakthroughs in:

• Medical training, using multi-agent world models to simulate emergency department scenarios.
• Human cognition, applying interpretable deep learning to understand how early childhood experiences shape brain development.
• Mental health, developing multimodal AI systems to identify biomarkers for depression.
• Pathology, building foundational models to transform diagnostic workflows.
• Agriculture, creating the first million-scale dataset for poultry management and advancing AI-assisted breeding for disease-resistant crops.
• Autonomous vehicles, designing edge-AI systems to improve safety and efficiency.

School of Computing faculty are principal investigators or co-investigators on the following SEED-funded projects:

• Developing Multi-Agent World Models for Emergency Department Training
  Zhen Xiang and Tianming Liu 
• Interpretable Deep Learning Linking Adverse Childhood Experiences and Cognition
  Khaled Rasheed and Jaewoo Lee 
• AI-Driven Multimodal Biomarker Discovery in Depression
  Tianming Liu 
• Building Multimodal Foundations for AI-Pathology at UGA
  Suchendra Bhandarkar 
• Million-Level Benchmark Dataset for Poultry Management
  Tianming Liu, Lakshmish Ramaswamy, and Ramviyas Parasuraman 
• AI-Assisted Breeding for Anthracnose Resistance in Pepper
  Jin Lu and Ramviyas Parasuraman 

Edge-AI for Safe and Efficient Autonomous Vehicles
Geng Yuan

These seed grants highlight the School of  Computing’s commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration—partnering with colleagues in medicine, public health, agriculture, engineering, education, business, and the social sciences.  Dr. Agrawal, School Director, quotes ``UGA is one of only a few Universities across the country to have this level of academic breadth – having Medicine (and related fields like Vet Med, Public Health, and Pharmacy), Agriculture, Engineering, Law, and Business on the same campus. It is great to see our faculty engage with these units, and hopefully these seed grants will also lead to substantial external funding in the future.’’. 

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