Research

Cezanne: A Novel Multi-Modal AI For Vision-Language Models (2022 - present)
The objective of this project is to create a groundbreaking multi-modal AI, named Cezanne, designed to enhance the generalizability of vision-language models. Inspired by Paul Cezanne's depiction of reality in his "distorted" still-life paintings, the approach enriches generalizability by integrating Cezanne-like "lived perspective" into vision representations and capturing the experiential solidity of the presence of objects in language representations.

Students:
  • Chinh Hoang (Fall 2023 - present), Ph.D.
  • Nathan Roberts (Fall 2022 - present), Undergraduate
Grants:
  • Undergraduate Creative Activities and Research Experience (UCARE) fellowship, UNL
News:

Messages From A Future You (MFAFY): Personalizing Pre-trained Language Models (2022 - present) AI for Social Good
The aim of this project is to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant called "Messages From A Future You (MFAFY)" to personalize behavior-change interventions. MFAFY utilizes the general knowledge of pre-trained language models (LMs) to serve as a scaffolding assistive AI. This LM-based AI assistant personalizes interventions by analyzing users' longitudinal multimodal experiential data, comprising repeated measures of cognitive (e.g., performance in cognitive tests), non-cognitive (e.g., emotional state), and health-related (e.g., quality of sleep, activity) attributes. The MFAFY incorporates a dialogic protocol, fostering a tailored coaching social relationship with a future self represented as an AI. This relationship with the future self forms the social context, drawing on social psychological notions of identity, and framing the theory of change underlying the intervention. The general-purpose AI for adaptive interventions is grounded in an application for improving college STEM academic performance.

Collaborators:
  • Dr. Bilal Khan (College of Health, Department of Community and Population Health, Lehigh University)
  • Dr. Neeta Kantamneni (Educational Psychology, UNL)
Students:
  • Ahatsham (Fall 2023 - present), Ph.D.
  • Sharif Akil (Fall 2022 - present), Undergraduate
Grants: News:

A Bottom-up and Culturally-aligned AI for Providing Behavior-change Interventions to Improve Food Sovereignty and Climate Resilience in Rural Tribal and Non-tribal Communities (2023 - present) AI for Social Good
This interdisciplinary project aims to develop a bottom-up and culturally-aligned artificial intelligence (AI) system for delivering behavior-change interventions to enhance food sovereignty and climate resilience in rural tribal and non-tribal communities. The research is divided into two key thrusts: (i) gathering experiential data on food-related behavior from diverse rural communities, and (ii) creating innovative algorithms to harness the capabilities of generative AI language models (LM) for delivering context-specific interventions aligned with local cultures. The study addresses the crucial need for comprehensive involvement and feedback from community representatives, focusing on identifying (i) pertinent food and diet-specific information, (ii) individual and community-level perspectives on privacy concerns, acceptability, and efficacy associated with AI, (iii) food-related behaviors and contextual settings suitable for an AI-based intervention system, and (iv) strategies to target identified behaviors.

Collaborators:
  • Dr. Simanti Banerjee (Associate Professor Department of Agricultural Economics, Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources)
  • Theodore Hibbeler (Tribal Extension Educator, Native American Coalition, UNL)
  • Mary Emery (Professor, Agricultural Leadership, Education & Communications, Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and Director, Rural Prosperity Nebraska)
  • Julia McQuillan (Professor, Department of Sociology, College of Arts & Sciences)
  • Tonya Haigh (Research Assistant Professor, Social Science Coordinator and Project Coordinator National Drought Mitigation Center, UNL)
  • Jordan Soliz (Professor, Department of Communication Studies, College of Arts and Sciences)
Grants:

Health-related Misinformation Detection from Social Media Data using Deep Learning (2019 - 2023) AI for Social Good
Collaborators:
  • Dr. Ming (Bryan) Wang (College of Journalism and Mass Communication, UNL)
  • Daisy Dai (Professor, Associate Dean of Research, COPH, UNMC)
  • Dr. Kelly Cawcutt (Division of Infectious Diseases and Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, University of Nebraska Medical Center)
Students:
  • Atharva Tendle (2022-2023), Graduate
  • Yuanzhi Chen (2020-2021), Graduate
  • Eric Le (2019-2020), Undergraduate
  • Vy Doan (2019-2020), Undergraduate
Grants: News:
  • Article on our misinformation detection research published in the Nebraska Today


© M. R. Hasan