The AI Institutes at Michigan has awarded 86 researchers and teams across the University of Michigan through its Empowering Research with AI Awards. The awards recognize their use of artificial intelligence to advance knowledge or practice in research fields.
Awards range from $1,000 to $3,000, and more than 180 submissions were received.
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Selected projects include those using AI to spot hard-to-detect heart problems, running automated microbiology labs that plan and carry out experiments, digitizing plant specimen labels in support of biodiversity research and building AI coaches for singers.
Awarded submissions were selected from the Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint campuses and represent fields including engineering, mathematics, biomedical and health sciences, social sciences, environmental sciences, the physical sciences, humanities and the arts.
To be considered, teams had to demonstrate that AI was central to their research, not just a supporting tool. AI methods ranged from established approaches such as machine learning and computer vision to generative and multimodal AI. The selection criteria also included the responsible use of AI, impact and clarity.
“The awards reflect the creativity and commitment of our research community in their pursuit of important directions of exploration by leveraging AI,” said Jing Liu, executive director of the Michigan Institute for Data and AI in Society and head of the AIIM planning team. “But we also want to highlight our researchers’ thoughtful approaches that make AI-enabled research meaningful and trustworthy.”
Launched in 2025 and coordinated by the Office of the Vice President for Research, AIIM is a universitywide hub to support and coordinate U-M’s AI research organizations, enhancing their impact and national visibility. The initiative supports the university’s Look to Michigan strategic vision and public mission. The Empowering Research with AI Awards are one of the ways AIIM is encouraging new research practices and culture.
This award also highlights the collaborative nature of AIIM. Many AI organizations on campus have encouraged their researchers to apply. The Michigan Institute for Data and AI in Society, or MIDAS, provided dozens of reviewers. Awards were announced at the Empowering Research with AI Awards Ceremony on March 31, the culminating event of the AI in Research Symposium hosted by MIDAS.
Many award applicants gave oral and poster presentations, called “AI Journeys,” at the two-day symposium highlighting how they thoughtfully selected research questions and AI methods, built expertise and collaboration and overcame challenges to achieve meaningful research outcomes.
“AIIM is bringing together all of the AI research organizations on campus and highlighting how AI is changing research practice and outcomes, so that AI adoption across the university can be more effective and collaborative,” said Brad Orr, associate vice president for research, natural sciences and engineering, who oversees the AIIM initiative. “By strengthening partnerships and transforming research culture, we’re positioning U-M to lead in the responsible use of AI, driving discoveries that improve lives and shape a better future.”
Below are the award program’s Grand Prize winners:
AI-Driven Transcription of Herbarium Specimens: Scalable Workflows for Biodiversity Data Mobilization
LSA
Brad Ruhfel, William Weaver, Kyle Lough, Stephen Smith
AI-powered Dataset Curation, Processing, and Rehearsal Interfaces for A Cappella
School of Information; College of Engineering; School of Music, Theatre & Dance
Ting-Yu Pan, Kexin Phyllis Ju, Yuna Lee, Christian Li, Hao-Wen Dong
BacterAI: Self-driving Microbiology Labs at Scale
College of Engineering
Paul Jensen, Benjamin David, Vasu Rao, Noelle Toong, Ruqaiya Siddiqui, Chloe Baumer, Will Herbert
Beyond the Black Box: Generative AI and Synthetic Data for Trustworthy Medical Image Analysis
Medical School
Matthias Wilms, Ahmad O. Ahsan, Nils D. Forkert, Emma A. M. Stanley
Canons of Statutory Interpretation at the Supreme Court, 1791-2024
Law School
Nina Mendelson, Jonathan Choi
A Foundation Vision Model for Electrocardiography: Reducing Data Demands to Democratize Diagnosis of Microvascular Dysfunction
Medical School
Venkatesh L. Murthy
The Great Lakes AI Lab: A Focal Point for Freshwater Science
School for Environment and Sustainability
Dani Jones, David Cannon, Ayumi Fujisaki-Manome, Casey Godwin, Yi Hong, Abby Hutson
Interpretable and Decision-Making Artificial Intelligence for Catalyst and Materials Discovery
College of Engineering
Bryan R. Goldsmith, Suljo Linic
The Noisy Path from Source to Citation: Measuring How Scholars Engage with Past Research
School of Information; College of Engineering
Hong Chen, David Jurgens, Misha Teplitskiy
Samantha Farmer
How important were the ethical and environmental dangers of AI use in the assessment of these projects? Although some of these projects seem to be genuinely focused on testing “AI” capabilities for mechanical processes (“AI” here being a buzzword for what is mostly machine learning, only using far more resources), after reading all of the available project summaries and titles it seems like a significant amount of them are ill-conceived. In fact, I wonder how they even pass the IRB. But it looks like a lot of projects have managed to grift at minimum $86,000 and at most $258,000 from the university that should have gone to actually useful projects that promote the dignity and creativity of humanity and further justice. It is frustrating that The Record continues to adopt an entirely unnuanced, promotional perspective on AI that doesn’t represent the beliefs of many of the faculty, students, staff, and community members (who are about to be paying the price for Michigan’s data center in our own backyard), and that The Record keeps publishing articles by university spokespeople who clearly use AI in the “generation” (I hesitate to call it actually writing) of their articles.