GRI announces significant investments in applied research at William & Mary

Awards will support research at the intersection of applied AI and education, as well as more than two dozen faculty doing a variety of applied research across campus.

The following story originally appeared on the website for William & Mary's Global Research Institute. - Ed.

Today, as part of a signature initiative of the Provost's Office, William & Mary's Global Research Institute (GRI) announced nearly $750,000 in investments in applied research across campus.

GRI's new research acceleration model will support 10 projects across the research lifecycle - from early exploration, to pilot studies, to established programs ready to become sustainable research enterprises - as well as a joint hire with the College of Arts & Sciences.

This inaugural cohort aligns with the strategic direction of the Office of the Provost following W&M's elevation to R1 status. Reflecting university strategic priorities, the Provost's Office has made significant financial commitments to support faculty as they build sustainable research enterprises. These investments in faculty research are also enabled by the generous contributions of GRI Advisory Board members and dedicated W&M alumni and friends.

For the last 23 years, research projects at GRI have been grounded primarily in the social sciences. Now, the inaugural cohort of 31 faculty researchers represents a portfolio that extends far beyond Chancellors Hall. The institute will support projects hailing from the College of Arts & Sciences, the School of Computing, Data Sciences & Physics, the School of Education, William & Mary's Batten School & VIMS, and the Provost's Office (AidData).

"The immense talent and disciplinary range represented in this cohort demonstrate that William & Mary is primed to produce research that addresses the world's most pressing issues-from nuclear proliferation to food security to artificial intelligence," said Provost Peggy Agouris. "GRI's commitment to supporting faculty in building sustainable applied research initiatives reflects the promise of our R1 designation."

Projects were selected through a rigorous review process that involved 20 faculty and administrators from across the university, as well as a dozen external reviewers. Each proposal was evaluated on real-world impact, external funding trajectory, research excellence, partnership strength and student engagement.

"GRI was built on the idea that great applied research doesn't happen in isolation," said GRI Director Mike Tierney. "GRI will do all it can to make sure our faculty have the partners, the resources, and the staff support to take their great ideas into the world."

At GRI, students are an essential part of any research team. And students working with GRI-supported projects learn by doing: They will help design studies and collect data, travel abroad to do field work, co-author publications, and present findings to both academic and practitioner audiences.

"Doing research through GRI has shown me what I'm capable of - from working in a hospital in Kenya to helping design surveys for D.C. think tank professionals," said Simone Annan '28. "The faculty and staff's trust in my ability to take on high-level work, paired with their thoughtful mentorship, made these formative experiences possible and ultimately shaped how I think about my career path."

Teaching and learning powered by AI

GRI's Accelerate program represents its most significant investment in applied research to help projects grow while they're at GRI and endure when their period of acceleration is over. In addition to up to $300,000 of flexible funding over the course of three years, Accelerate projects will have dedicated GRI staff support for external grant proposals, research communications and partnership development. After three years, projects will spin out to a permanent home in the university.

"William & Mary is pursuing preeminence. The Accelerate program is a path to that destination," said Vice Provost for Research Alyson Wilson. "We believe the right project, given the right resources and the right team, can generate external funding, drive impact and put William & Mary on the map."

This year, GRI will award funding to Yixuan (Janice) Zhang, of the computer science department at the School of Computing, Data Sciences & Physics, and Meredith Kier, from the School of Education. Their multidisciplinary project lives at the intersection of two William & Mary strengths: innovations in education and applied artificial intelligence, bolstered by the School of Education and the School of Computing, Data Sciences & Physics.

Zhang and Kier seek to harness the power of AI to solve one of the most stubborn problems in math education: Research has shown that students learn how to solve math problems more effectively when they do so in a group. The trick comes in trying to evaluate several factors at once - whether they correctly answered the question, if they came to that answer in the correct way, and how they did so as a group.

To address this, Zhang and Kier are designing an AI-powered assessment system that provides teachers with real-time insights into each student's mathematical reasoning and collaboration skills. The system will suggest targeted questions teachers can ask to advance student thinking, transforming assessment from something that happens only at the end of a unit or quarter into a continuous process that directly informs teaching and instruction. The project builds on Zhang's prior NSF-funded work with colleagues at George Mason University, which developed AI tools for collaborative mathematics learning, and Kier's expertise in learning sciences, examining how students learn and grow in STEM contexts.

"When students solve problems together, their conversations reveal how they think, but teachers can't be everywhere at once," said Zhang. "We're designing tools that capture those insights and present them in ways that support, rather than replace, teacher decision-making. It's human-centered AI: technology that amplifies what good teachers already do."

"With Accelerate funding, we can put these tools in the hands of Virginia teachers and students, generating the evidence we need to scale this approach nationally," she added.

A multifaceted approach to research development

As part of the Accelerate program, GRI and the College of Arts & Sciences will also jointly hire a new tenured faculty member in the government department. In their first three years at William & Mary, this researcher will dedicate their time to developing their research enterprise at the university - bringing students into their work and building an externally-funded team to scale the research agenda. After those initial three years, this faculty member will take their sustainable research enterprise back to the Government department. The national search for this senior researcher was launched last month.

"GRI has been an extraordinary partner, and this joint hire between GRI and the College of Arts & Sciences is the exciting next step in that partnership," says Dean Suzanne Raitt. "The College of Arts & Sciences is already home to exceptional research across disciplines. By pairing GRI's research support with the College's commitment to world-class teaching and applied learning, we are building on that momentum, continuing to support an environment that attracts exceptional research talent to William & Mary."

From seed to scale

Researchers often face a "chicken-and-egg" problem: In order to attract major grants, they have to have pilot data. But in order to collect pilot data, they need flexible funding. GRI's Seed Funding program fills that gap.

GRI will support six projects with seed funding of up to $20,000 over the next academic year. The combination of funding and staff time will enable researchers to demonstrate proof-of-concept to external grantmakers in an increasingly complicated funding environment.

• Isabelle Taylor and Katelynn Perrault Uptmor of the chemistry department will use machine learning to help develop a way to prevent and treat illness from an antibiotic-resistant bacteria responsible for severe, hospital-acquired infections.
• Jennifer Kahn, anthropology, and Harmony Dalgleish and Joshua Puzey - both biologists - will examine which factors affect environmental microplastics in our food systems using a case study in Polynesia.
• Ming Sun and Piero Mazzini of the Batten School of Coastal & Marine Sciences & VIMS will contribute to restoring the Chesapeake Bay oyster population by developing data on how marine heat waves impact the quality of oyster reef habitats.
• Ariel BenYishay, economics, and Kunwar Singh, AidData, will help policymakers address food insecurity by piloting a global crop database in Kenya and Zambia to track crop yields and assess the impacts of climate change.
• Jeffrey Kaplow, government, and Saskia Mordijck, physics, will respond to the rapid changes in nuclear fusion technology by developing a novel risk assessment framework for evaluating the proliferation risk associated with fusion.
• Julius Odhiambo, health sciences, and Yuming Sun, mathematics, will address disparities in tuberculosis treatment among nomadic pastoralist communities in Kenya by identifying the conditions under which patients discontinue their treatment programs.

Exploring the big questions

At the heart of GRI's new model is a dedication to the top of the research funnel: investigation and open-ended inquiry. At the early exploration phase, GRI is supporting three "Pathfinder Groups" - cohorts of faculty and students who will spend the academic year considering "big questions" around a core theme.

This year, the Pathfinder Groups include:

• Amy Limoncelli, history, will be joined by Meaghan Stiman and Fernando Galeana Rodriguez, sociology, and Eun A Jo, government, to consider global citizenship and the ways individuals interact with multinational bodies.
• Daniel Cristol, biology, will facilitate a group exploring the ecological and anthropological implications of the recolonization of the beaver in Virginia. He will be joined by James Kaste and Dominick Cirruzi, geology; Mara Dicenta, anthropology; Randolph Chambers, biology; and Juan Cajigas Rotundo, environment & sustainability program and American studies.
• Ran Yang, physics, and Elizabeth Mead, art, will take an interdisciplinary approach to the concept of time and consider William & Mary's role in an age of AI and renewed space exploration. Their group includes Camille Andrews, W&M Libraries; Jon Pineda, English; Harmony Dalgleish, biology; Monica Seger, Italian; and Jonah Goldwater, philosophy.

All three Pathfinder projects will recruit students to join them as seminar participants and intellectual partners in these journeys.

These projects will officially begin their time in-residence at GRI on July 1. In the fall, GRI will also host research development workshops open to the entire campus community to continue to build the pipeline for applied research at William & Mary.

"William & Mary is full of talented faculty asking big questions with big implications for how we live our lives," said Tierney. "We're building the engine that takes that research from idea to impact. GRI staff will wake up every day focused on helping William & Mary faculty to advance their research goals and teach students through the research process."

Mary Trimble, Global Research Institute

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