Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group

I have the distinction, or dis-honor, of having all of my active federal research grants terminated by the current administration. None of the grants were researching anything especially controversial, but they were all funded by programs that have been effectively shut down. To add insult to injury, the termination letters each stated that our research project no longer “effectuates” the goals of the funding program and, in one case, "no longer serves the interest of the United States," which feels a bit harsh. Further, we were given no advance notice -- the terminations were effective on the same day we received notice (one of which was at 4:30pm on a Friday). I apologize for the length of this post (I am a professor, after all), but I've broken things up into sections so you can skip around as desired.  Executive Summary: Academic research is essential for the advancement of technology and scientific/medical breakthroughs and is how we train the next generation of res...

Dr. Erika Frydenlund , Melissa Miller-Felton and I attended the Air Force Office of Scientific Research ( @AFOSR ) 2024 Trust and Influence Program Review on August 12-16, 2024 in Dayton, Ohio. We were invited because of our Minerva Research Initiative Grant, “ What's Missing? Innovating Interdisciplinary Methods for Hard-to-Reach Environments ” awarded by the U.S. Department of Defense in 2022 (described in a previous blog post by Dr. Erika Frydenlund when this grant was first awarded). Although the research conducted is public, this meeting was not recorded.   On the first day, the afternoon keynote was given by Dr. Samuel Segun , senior researcher at Global Center on AI Governance . He spoke on the topic “Building responsible & trustworthy AI: Operationalizing Responsible Artificial Intelligence (RAI) Practice,” where he underscored the critical need for trust in AI systems. Dr. Segun motivated the importance of trusting AI systems by asking, 'Who is responsible?...

Truly interdisciplinary research is hard. It’s even harder when the place you’re trying to research is impossible to reach, either due to conflict or regimes that are hostile to outside researchers. In that hard-to-reach environment, we’re not only trying to bridge epistemological and methodological divides to understand “ground truth,” we also can’t do all the types of data collection and analysis we might need. For instance, it is really difficult to send qualitative sociologists and anthropologists into the field to collect data during a conflict event.  So excited to start this dream project to advance #socialscience research with an international dream team! @jojpa @MichaelaHynie @weiglemc @phonedude_mln @katapalacio Department of Defense Awards $28.7M in Grants for the FY2021 Minerva Research Initiative https://t.co/kJEPS0wpjA — Erika Frydenlund (@ErikaFrydenlund) February 25, 2022 The Minerva Research Initiative has given researchers at Old Dominion University $1...