Ethics Small Grants for Graduate Students

Building capacity for genomic research in East Africa | Tami Gjorgjieva, Genetics 

While the field of human genetics has invested significantly in collecting data from globally diverse populations, it has not made comparable investments in developing global capabilities for genomic research. This project fills that gap. In collaboration with the Tanzania Human Genetics Organization (THGO), a national nonprofit focused on developing genomic research and policy in Tanzania, we have been working on several initiatives aimed at supporting early-career research trainees in East Africa. This research is focused specifically on evaluating the effectiveness of one of those initiatives, the MERIT (Mentorship and Research Individualized Training) program. In MERIT, 25 mentees from East Africa are matched with mentors from the United States and Europe to work on a specific research analysis over 8 weeks; pairs are matched based on complementary needs and expertise. To understand how effective and scalable this program is, we are conducting pre-, mid-, and post-MERIT surveys as well as post-MERIT interviews with all participants; we will combine this data with that of our pilot MERIT program that took place in 2025 with 8 participants. This community-engaged work and research will provide insights on how to build collaborations between academics from the Global South and Global North to foster local expertise in genomic research.

Deep Sketch-Based 3D Modeling | Alberto Tono, Civil and Environmental Engineering 

This grant funded support for my research paper, "Deep Sketch-Based 3D Modeling: A Survey.” Our work surveys how artificial intelligence translates simple human sketches into complex 3D models and invites human-center reflections. While this technology makes 3D creation more accessible to everyone, it also raises critical ethical questions. Who owns the rights to AI-generated 3D art when the models are trained on human creations? How do we prevent these tools from amplifying cultural biases or being used to generate harmful content? By systematically analyzing the current landscape of sketch-to-3D technologies, our project not only maps technical progress but emphasizes the urgent need to design these systems responsibly. My paper fostered vital discussions among researchers about building ethical frameworks directly into creative AI tools, ensuring they empower users while safeguarding intellectual property and cultural integrity.

The Politicization of Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)| Tom Nachtigal, School of Education

This research examines how Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), once a broadly supported, bipartisan educational framework focused on students’ emotional well-being, relationships, and responsible decision-making, became a highly contested political issue in the United States. Using a unique dataset of more than 2,100 SEL-related state policies and a newly constructed 50-state panel dataset covering 2010–2025, the project investigates how partisan actors, media organizations, advocacy groups, and policymakers attached ideological meaning to SEL and transformed it from an administrative consensus into a political battleground. The study seeks to identify the social, cultural, and institutional conditions that drive the politicization of education policy, while also addressing ethical questions about how researchers can study contentious public issues without reinforcing polarization.

Climate Change and Access to Debt | June Choi, Earth Systems Science

Addressing climate change through both mitigation and adaptation is anticipated to require global investments of more than $6 trillion annually by 2035. However, many countries face significant barriers to accessing the finance needed for these investments due to low or absent credit ratings, large debt burdens, and high borrowing costs. There is concern that climate change, through its economic impacts, may amplify these barriers, potentially locking countries into a “vicious cycle” in which mounting losses further constrain their capacity to invest in adaptation and mitigation. This research provides evidence that the cost of capital for many countries has already been shaped by their historical exposure to tropical cyclones and warming temperatures. More broadly, this work highlights the urgency of accounting for the unevenly distributed impacts of climate change in global climate finance negotiations. For instance, a core principle of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR), which recognizes that countries have contributed unequally to the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change. This research was presented at the 30th UN Conference of the Parties (COP) in Brazil, where one of the key topics was mobilizing finance for Loss and Damages arising from climate change. 

Emotions and the Brain | Mason Hu, Computational and Mathematical Engineering

This project explores how artificial intelligence can help us better understand the emotional patterns hidden within human brain activity. Using ultra-high-field functional MRI data, I train deep learning models to recognize how different emotions—such as joy, fear, or calm—appear in the brain when people experience natural stories and films. Rather than relying on pre-defined brain maps, the model learns directly from data, identifying patterns that align with long-established psychological dimensions such as valence (positive vs. negative) and arousal (calm vs. intense).

Beyond its technical contributions, the project also reflects on the ethical challenges of interpreting emotion from neural signals. By addressing issues of privacy, bias, and responsible communication of results, this research aims to advance both scientific understanding and ethical awareness in neurotechnology. The work was presented at the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society’s Neural Engineering (NER 2025) conference in San Diego this November. Ultimately, this study seeks to promote the transparent and responsible use of AI in understanding the human mind.

Neuroimaging and Charitable Giving| Tara Srirangarajan, Psychology

My research advances our fundamental understanding of how neural and psychological processes shape collective responses to environmental imagery on social media while offering tools to promote conservation and charitable giving.  Visual imagery can motivate environmental advocacy and charitable giving, but the mechanisms underlying their broad appeal remain unclear. To understand how images of wildlife species elicit online engagement, we investigated links between behavioral probes, neuroimaging data (n=37), and social media engagement data from National Geographic’s Instagram content stream.