UC Davis Engineers Help Advance Collaboration, Innovation with New AI and Health Award
Engineers at the University of California, Davis, are members of three out of six teams that received the inaugural AI and Health Seed Funding Awards from the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute, or CITRIS.
The AI and Health Seed Funding Program is a new initiative from CITRIS. It’s focused on strengthening interdisciplinary connections between schools and colleges across UC Davis and UC Davis Health through six one-year $50,000 awards. The program’s long-term goal is to establish UC Davis as a leader in interdisciplinary AI-enabled healthcare technology research.
The awards serve as short-term, stimulating funding for early pilot and proof-of-concept studies that have strong potential for future scaling and external funding. Successful proposals also aligned with CITRIS’ mission to address significant social challenges using information technology, fostered interdisciplinary collaboration and involved junior faculty.
The initial projects envision AI applications as a way to address every stage of life and a wide range of conditions.
Associate Professor of Computer Science Hamed Pirsiavash sees AI as an important tool to take eye health to the next level. He is part of a project using AI to improve corneal care and eye transplant procedures with Mark Mannis, a Distinguished Professor of ophthalmology and vision science at UC Davis Health.
Professor of Electrical and Computer Science Chen-Nee Chuah is working with Michelle Cohn, a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Linguistics, to create a non-intrusive test for cognitive impairment, a sign of Alzheimer disease and other dementias. They’re working on a large language model capable of detecting mental decline through vocal features, such as pitch and speech patterns.
Associate Professor of Computer Science Josh McCoy is collaborating with Jessica Draughon Moret, an associate professor of clinical nursing at UC Davis Health, on a chatbot to connect survivors of sexual assault to resources and community support.
The teams will share results and next steps from their projects in 2027.
