UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) recently selected five projects to receive funding from its seed grant program. The 2026–2027 funding aims to support interdisciplinary research activities and generate preliminary results that may lead to bigger projects involving external funding.
Members of the IST faculty wrote short proposals that were reviewed by their peers and awarded on a competitive basis. The 16 proposals submitted spanned the college’s three departments: Human-Centered Computing and Social Informatics, Informatics and Intelligent Systems and Privacy and Cybersecurity Informatics.
“These projects reflect IST’s foundational character as an interdisciplinary college,” said Carleen Maitland, associate dean for research and graduate affairs in the College of IST. “Two projects involve collaborators from other colleges — the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, the College of the Liberal Arts and the College of Medicine. Two others involve faculty from different departments within the college. Beyond interdisciplinarity, the projects reflect strategic directions for our research. In particular, two projects contribute to the groundbreaking areas of security for extended reality and artificial intelligence (AI) for software security. Another two contribute to key impact areas of children's online safety and AI and wellness."
The following projects were selected for funding.
“Beyond English: Benchmarking Large-Language Model (LLM) Clinical Safety and Appropriateness for Multilingual Mental Health Support”
- Principal investigator (PI): Saeed Abdullah, associate professor, IST Department of Human-Centered Computing and Social Informatics, and faculty affiliate, Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence
- Co-PIs: Guodong Liu, professor; Dahlia Mukherjee, Hershey Medical Center Manager; and Sanjay Yadav, associate professor; all from the College of Medicine; S. Shyam Sundar, Evan Pugh University Professor and James P. Jimirro Professor of Media Effects, Bellisario College, and director, Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence
“Data Infrastructure and Identity Work in AI Companionship”
- PI: Dana Calacci, assistant professor, IST Department of Informatics and Intelligent Systems, and faculty co-hire, Institute for Computational and Data Sciences
- Co-PI: Ariana Steele, Gil Watz Early Career Professor in Language and Linguistics, College of the Liberal Arts
“LLM-Driven Semantic Oracles for Automated Detection and Repair of Software Logic Vulnerabilities”
- PI: Hong Hu, assistant professor, IST Department of Privacy and Cybersecurity Informatics
- Co-PI: Jinyuan Jia, assistant professor, IST Department of Privacy and Cybersecurity Informatics
“Risk Exposure and Harm Reduction in Children’s Online Gambling”
- PI: Xinning Gui, assistant professor, IST Department of Human-Centered Computing and Social Informatics, and faculty affiliate, Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence
- Co-PI: Yubo Kou, Haile Family Early Career Professor, IST Department of Human-Centered Computing and Social Informatics, and faculty affiliate, Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence
“Extended to Reality: Prompt Injection in 3D Environments”
- PI: Ying Chen, assistant professor, Department of Human-Centered Computing and Social Informatics
- Co-PI: Jinyuan Jia, assistant professor, IST Department of Privacy and Cybersecurity Informatics