Winter 2025 Issue

Initiating Innovation

ARII grants fund groundbreaking research into democracy, health care and sustainability

January 30, 2025
By Annie Powell M.A. ’18, Ph.D. ’24

Faculty, staff and students across William & Mary are tackling critical issues with funding from the Applied Research & Innovation Initiative (ARII). Sponsored by Michael Foradas ’78 and Valerie Foradas HON ’21, ARII grants support multidisciplinary research projects that align with W&M’s Vision 2026 strategic plan, including the key areas of data, democracy, careers and water. Another goal of the initiative is to increase student internships and work experiences. The grants in this five-year pilot program are hosted by the Global Research Institute, Institute for Integrative Conservation and Whole of Government Center of Excellence.

AI + DEMOCRACY

A full two-year ARII grant was awarded to a project studying the impact of artificial intelligence on democracy at local, national and international levels. It is an interdisciplinary collaboration between faculty in government, education and the Studio for Teaching & Learning Innovation (STLI).

“Our concept was to understand how generative AI tools are impacting democracy and ensure that these tools are used in ways that promote critical thinking,” says Lindy Johnson, the Robert D. and Patricia Lee Pavey Family Co-Chair in Instructional Technology.

Johnson, working on the project at the local level, studies how AI impacts K-12 teachers from the Williamsburg area. Some teachers have used AI to make their own work more efficient. Others have deep misgivings about their students’ overreliance on the technology.

“One of our findings is that teachers are practically begging for guidelines,” Johnson says. “And no one has those guidelines yet.”

AI + DEMOCRACY: ARII grants funded a two-year study on the relationship between generative AI and democracy, with researchers from government, education and the Studio for Teaching & Learning Innovation Photo Credit: Napong Rattanaraktiya

STLI Executive Director Adam Barger Ph.D. ’16 seeks to reorient users’ approach to AI tools on a broader scale. He is particularly interested in expanding digital fluency through a fuller understanding of human-computer interaction.

“We’re making the argument that you need to actively build four different mindsets to approach AI: agency, curiosity, wisdom and character. If you develop these mindsets as a learner and a digital citizen first, you’ll be better equipped to use generative AI in a way that is ethical, humane, results-oriented and sustainable,” says Barger.

Katie Oles ’24 works alongside Barger to help AI users adopt those mindsets. “We’re developing mini courses that focus on shorter form information sources and interactive activities to engage and educate,” Oles says.

Phil Roessler, professor of government, brings the project to an international scale as he works on democratizing access to AI in emerging economies. Together with Shreya Bhattacharya at the Digital Inclusion & Governance Lab, Roessler examines the impact of interactive voice response and edutainment campaigns on the democratization of generative AI in Tanzania.

Each part of the project operated independently over the last year, but the team regularly discussed methodologies and outcomes and is planning to merge the components in the upcoming year.

AI + HEALTH CARE

The impact of AI on international health care is the focus of a one-year ARII exploratory grant project led by Haipeng Chen, assistant professor of data science. Chen’s broader research agenda focuses on developing algorithms in the AI field and applying those techniques to critical societal domains, including international public health. Working with W&M partners in the kinesiology department and Institute for Integrative Conservation, as well as the Community Health Partners organization in Kenya, Chen and his colleagues are using machine-learning tools and methods to make predictions about childhood vaccine availability and usage in the Narok region of Kenya.

“AI can be really useful in extracting critical information that can help policymaking in public health,” says Chen. “Community Health Partners have very good data sets with the medical histories of the children that have been visiting the clinics. But they haven’t had the tools to utilize this kind of information.”

Chen’s team has found that vaccination status is highly dependent on individual villages. Using AI analytics, the team hopes to be able to predict where an individual child would receive a specific vaccine based on the child’s demographic status and location. Developing a time series model would then enable the team to predict the amount of a vaccine that would be needed at a clinic at a given time to provide enough vaccinations.

Two undergraduate students, Yaqi Liu ’25 and Jimmy Bach ’26, work with Chen on this research. They are more than assistants, however, and are often the ones driving the project forward.

“I put a lot of emphasis on undergraduate students leading the effort, while I cheerlead and point directions,” Chen says.

In summer 2024, Bach traveled to Kenya to digitize vaccine data collected from Community Health Partners and report on the team’s progress. Liu presented the team’s research at the October ARII Research Showcase attended by the other grant recipients and the staff at the Global Research Institute, Institute for Integrative Conservation and the Whole of Government Center of Excellence. Chen says that the feedback they received from the presentations will help to direct the project’s next steps as they look to expand its scope.

Diatom exoskeletons, called frustules

SUSTAINABILITY

Hannes Schniepp, VMEC Professor of Applied Science, leads the other project that received a one-year ARII exploratory grant. He is studying how the exoskeletons of diatoms, microorganisms similar to algae, can be used to replace nonnatural materials — everything from single-use plastics to steel and concrete.

Hundreds of thousands of diatom species are found in waters all around the world, with blooms so large they can be seen from space. “There’s such an abundance of them that if we can tap into this then we can grow them at a gigantic scale, harvest them and turn them into workable materials,” Schniepp says.

About one-tenth of the width of a human hair, diatoms are lightweight enough to float at the surface of water but strong enough to resist mechanical forces, an alluring combination. Another enticing aspect is their ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

“The very thin exoskeleton of the diatom traps a small amount of carbon. The carbon becomes chemically locked away from the outside world,” says Aidan Lucas, a fourth-year applied science graduate student in Schniepp’s lab.

Lucas has taken the lead on the project, managing undergraduate students in addition to the lab work. “Everything in the workplace, whether in academia or industry, is team based,” Lucas says. “You have to communicate what you know well enough that students can not only understand what you’re doing but also help carry on your work.”

The team has been growing diatoms in the lab and has already constructed small-scale materials using 3D printing. Looking ahead, Schniepp and Lucas are eager to see how other disciplines will enhance their ability to work with diatoms.

“Right now, we’re growing them in a lab. But we need to know how this grows in nature, what species and nutrients are available,” says Schniepp. That’s where partners B.K. Song, professor of marine science at W&M’s Batten School of Coastal & Marine Sciences & VIMS, and Margaret Saha, Chancellor Professor of Biology, will lend their expertise in microbial ecology and molecular genetics, respectively.

The projects are still in the early phases of development. While the democracy project was conceived with the ARII grant in mind, the other two projects predated the grants. Chen calls the ARII grant “a great boost,” while Schniepp says that it provided an opportunity to put an “interdisciplinary spin” on the project.

Together, the ARII grants provide a foundation for innovative work and a model for collaborations that advance solutions to challenges close to home and around the world.