Posted on October 3, 2024 by UTSA School of Data Science
SDS core faculty receive grants to further advance artificial intelligence
The UTSA School of Data Science (SDS) and Open Cloud Institute have awarded over $100,000 to three core faculty teams as part of the Collaborative Seed Funding Grant program. This program aims to advance faculty research and foster collaborations in AI security, safety, and computing. It is spurred by the rise of so-called Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) which has grown capable of generating nearly human-like text, images, and code, and even simulating human interactions and decision-making processes. However, as GenAI becomes more commonplace in everyday life, concerns have been raised about the accuracy, security, and ethics of its use. As such, the Collaborative Seed Funding Grant program selected three applications dedicated to investigating AI security and its implications for society in an interdisciplinary manner.
The first team is led by Mitra Bokaei Hosseini, Ph.D., an assistant professor of computer science with the College of Sciences, and SDS Core Faculty member. She is joined by Yufang Jin, Ph.D., professor of electrical and computer engineering with the Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design, as well as Wenbo Wu, Ph.D. (Graham Weston Endowed Professor, Department Chair in Management Science and Statistics, and associate professor of management science and statistics) and Keying Ye, Ph.D. (professor of management science and statistics), both with the Alvarez College of Business and both SDS Core Faculty members. For their project entitled “A User-Centric Predictive Model of Perceived Risk in Generative AI,” the team will be investigating the privacy risks of sharing information with GenAI models, along with users’ awareness of and willingness to take those risks. The project was awarded $35,000.
The second team is headed by Dharanidhar “DD” Dang, Ph.D., an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering with the Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design. His co-principal investigator is Kevin Desai, Ph.D., an assistant professor of computer science with the College of Sciences, and an SDS Core Faculty member. The two researchers have received $35,000 for their project titled “LIGHT-SEAL: Hardware Trojan Aware Photonic Transformer for Secured Generative AI.” While silicon photonics, the integration of optical components and silicon chips have many advantages – primarily higher speed and efficiency in a smaller, more efficient package – they are still not immune to malicious attacks. The duo plans to develop a system that allows for better monitoring of unauthorized access to AI systems employing such hardware.
The third team features Ke Yang, Ph.D., assistant professor of computer science with the College of Sciences, and SDS Core Faculty member. Also participating in the project are Anthony Rios, Ph.D., (assistant professor of information systems and cyber security) and Yuexia Zhang, Ph.D., (assistant professor of management science and statistics) both with the Alvarez College of Business and SDS Core Faculty members. Their project – “Reducing Hallucination of LLMs for Causality-Integrated Personal Medical History Question Answering” – seeks to improve the accuracy of GenAI when answering users’ questions, specifically in healthcare settings. They were also awarded $35,000.
All three teams will present their interim findings at the second annual Los Datos Conference on Friday, October 4 from 8:30 a.m. – 6 p.m.
For more information on the UTSA School of Data Science and its Core Faculty visit https://sds.utsa.edu/.
— UTSA School of Data Science
