Ongoing Seed Funding Projects

Principal Investigators 

• Xiangmin (Helen) Liu, Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Management and Labor Relations, Human Resource Management, Labor Studies and Employment Relations
• Youngfeng Zhang, Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Arts and Sciences, Computer Science

Co-Investigators

• Adrienne Eaton, Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Management and Labor Relations, Labor Studies and Employment Relations
• Todd E. Vachon, Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Management and Labor Relations, Labor Studies and Employment Relations

Through recruitment and hiring processes, employers play a critical role in shaping economic opportunities for workers and their families by matching job candidates with vacancies. The integration of recommender systems in hiring practices has the potential to uncover the hidden workforce, reduce search costs for job seekers, and mitigate certain human biases. However, the pervasive use of data-driven recommender systems in hiring and recruitment has radically transformed the way we recognize, assess, and address fairness issues in employment decisions. In this project, our interdisciplinary team aims to develop a human-AI collaborative approach that seeks to enhance fairness throughout the entire lifecycle of job recommender systems, encompassing their development, adoption, and deployment. 

Principal Investigators   

• Tawfiq Ammari, Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Communication and Information, Library and Information Science  
• Emily A. Greenfield, Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Social Work, Hub for Aging Collaboration  

Co-Investigators  

• Natalie E. Pope, Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Social Work, Hub for Aging Collaboration  

 Age-friendly communities (AFC) are a global movement to make the places where we live, work, and play better for long and healthy lives. Recent studies have highlighted that the work of AFC leaders is highly complex, requiring the coordination of various types of capital within dynamic inter-organizational contexts spanning multiple levels of place-based communities and broader social systems. Given the agile and complex nature of AFC work, digital technologies offer strong potential to jump start, fortify, and systematize these efforts.

This mixed-method project will explore how AFC initiative leaders use digital tools to facilitate key operations in multisectoral and multilevel contexts. First, we will conduct a national survey of AFC initiative leaders to identify trends across their use of digital tools and how they access such digital tools. Second, we will conduct semi-structured interviews with AFC practitioners across the United States to explore the socio-technical fractures in collaborations concerning the core operations of AFC initiatives. Together, the mixed-methods findings will advance understandings of participants’ mental models of the use of technology in their AFC work—both the types of digital tools that comprise their work and the ways digital tools enhance/frustrate their collaborative practice toward long-term social impact.

Principal Investigators   

• Andrea Hetling, Rutgers–New Brunswick Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Heldrich Center for Workforce Development   
• Rupa Khetarpal, Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Social Work, Center for Research on Ending Violence   

Co-Investigators  

• David Cohen, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Department of Medicine  
• Gabrielle Gault, Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Social Work, Center for Research on Ending Violence  
• Sarah McMahon, Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Social Work, Center for Research on Ending Violence   
• Sharifa Z. Williams, Rutgers–New Brunswick Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Public Health   

As the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted, workers in healthcare and other human service fields are confronted daily with challenges related to their clients’, students’, and patients’ experiences with trauma. Consistent exposure to such trauma can result in secondary trauma stress, compassion fatigue, and burnout. A growing body of evidence indicates that trauma informed care (TIC), an approach with known benefits for clients and patients, is also effective in addressing secondary traumatic stress among frontline workers. TIC refers to systems of care that establish the importance of understanding trauma as both interpersonal and sociopolitical, emphasize the impact on human functioning, and develop effective service delivery models.

This research project aims to understand the extent to which TIC is understood and implemented in the healthcare workplace and where gaps may exist. Using the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Department of Medicine as a case study, we will conduct a TIC needs assessment. The study will develop a tool that documents the current understanding of TIC as well as worker needs and experiences of secondary traumatic stress. Findings have implications for future research on TIC in human and health services and immediate practice directions in staff training and policy development in hospitals.   

Principal Investigators   

• Meiyin Liu, Rutgers-New Brunswick School of Engineering, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering  

 Co-Investigators  

• Dake Zhang, Rutgers-New Brunswick Graduate School of Education, Department of Educational Psychology  

 Assessment biases widely exist in higher education and are understudied, especially for problem types that do not have standard answers and/or require multi-step reasoning, such as word problem-solving in college engineering disciplines. A common bias comes from human graders’ limited capacity to identify and understand students’ usual and low-frequent problem-solving strategies, which are more commonly observed in students with under-represented minority backgrounds.  These unusual and low-frequent strategies represent students’ mathematical reasoning. However, they are often neglected by human graders, thus making evaluations biased against minority students.

To enhance Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in higher education engineering disciplines, this research proposes an automatic grading system for evaluating students’ word problems, particularly for detecting and understanding unusual and low-frequent problem-solving strategies. Additionally, instead of only assigning a score, this proposed project will contribute to the field by taking an initial effort to generate feedback with human-interpretable justifications. Specifically, this research will leverage visual representation of reasoning processes in learning sciences and graph technology in artificial intelligence. This research will develop a prototype web application hosted on Rutgers’ eLearning platform and adopt it in real engineering classes at Rutgers University.  

Principal Investigators

• Waheed U. Bajwa, Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Engineering; Electrical and Computer Engineering 
• David Zald, Center for Advanced Human Brain Imaging Research, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School 
• Linden Parkes, Center for Advanced Human Brain Imaging Research, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School 
• Avram Holmes, Center for Advanced Human Brain Imaging Research, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School 

Principal Investigators

• Adam Gormley, Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Engineering; Biomedical Engineering
• David Sleat, Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

Co-Investigator

• Peter Lobel, Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

Principal Investigators 

• Mark van der Maas, Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Social Work, Center for Gambling Studies 
• Jim Samuel, Rutgers–New Brunswick Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy; Informatics 

Principal Investigators 

• Ahmed Aziz Ezzat, Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Engineering; Industrial and Systems Engineering
• Josh Kohut, Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Environmental and Biological Sciences; Marine and Coastal Sciences 

Principal Investigators 

• Woojin Jung, Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Social Work, Global Health Institute
• Dimitris Metaxas, Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Arts and Sciences; Computer Science
• Dimitrios Ntarlagiannis, Rutgers–Newark School of Arts and Sciences; Earth and Environmental Sciences
• Min Xu, Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Arts and Sciences; Statistics
• Yuan Liao, Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Arts and Sciences; Economics

Co-Investigators 

• Quentin Stoeffler, University of Bordeaux School of Economics
• Maryam Hosseini, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, City Form Lab
• Simone Nsutezo, Microsoft Research, AI for Good Lab
• Anthony Ortiz, Microsoft Research, AI for Good Lab

Principal Investigators

• Jessica Leigh Hamilton, PhD (Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Arts and Sciences; Psychology);
• Daniel Charles Semenza, PhD (Rutgers–Camden Faculty of Arts and Sciences; Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice; Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences School of Public Health; Urban-Global Health)

Co-Investigators

• Paul Boxer, PhD (Rutgers–Newark School of Arts and Sciences-Newark; Psychology)
• Jeffrey Lane, PhD (Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Communication and Information; Communication)
• Linda Oshin, PhD (Rutgers–New Brunswick Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology; Clinical Psychology)

Youth are exposed to an alarming amount of gun violence in their homes, schools, communities, and media. The prevalence and ubiquity of smartphones and social media also have increased potential exposure to gun violence among youth in the United States. This study aims to evaluate the nature and impact of gun violence on youth mental health. The study team includes investigators across Rutgers campuses (New Brunswick, Camden, Newark), career stages, and departments of psychology, criminal justice, and communication. First, focus groups with adolescents (N = 20) will be conducted to better understand the nature of gun-related violence on social media. Second, the study team will investigate the frequency of gun violence exposure on social media, and whether it is associated with mental health problems concurrently and three months later using a survey design with 500 adolescents nationwide. Third, we will then evaluate these relationships with a subset of adolescents (N = 50) on a daily basis using intensive monitoring approaches of ecological momentary assessment and smartphone sensing. Findings have the potential to inform policy, education, and research conducted on the far-reaching effects of gun violence on youth across the United States.

Principal Investigators

• Evan Kleiman, PhD (Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Arts and Sciences; Psychology)
• Shireen Rizvi, PhD (Rutgers–New Brunswick Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology; Clinical Psychology);
• Paul Duberstein, PhD (Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences; Health Behavior, Society and Policy)

Co-Investigator

• Andrew Falzon, MD (Chief State Medical Examiner for the State of New Jersey; Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences; Pathology & Laboratory Medicine)

Someone dies by suicide via firearm every other day in New Jersey. The aim of this grant is to better characterize suicides in New Jersey through a collaboration between the Rutgers Suicide Prevention and Research Center (SPARC) and the New Jersey Office of the Chief State Medical Examiner (OCSME). We will conduct two projects. The first project involves coding existing data from death records. We will use established methods to code life stressors (e.g., death of a partner, recent police involvement, domestic violence) prior to suicide. We will compare stressors prior to firearm suicide with stressors prior to suicide by other means (hanging, overdose, etc.). Second, we will train members of our team to conduct psychological autopsies on those who die by suicide in NJ. Team members will conduct structured interviews with family members and friends of individuals who died by suicide. The aim of this project is to increase awareness of the importance of psychological autopsies as part of the work-up of suspected suicides, and to promote its use in the Medical Examiner community in New Jersey. In turn, this will help us gain unparalleled insight into the factors that may contribute to deaths by suicide within our state.

*Please note that this project has been partially funded by the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center.

Principal Investigators

• Valerie Tutwiler, PhD (Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Engineering; Biomedical Engineering)
• Joseph Hanna, MD, PhD, FACS (Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; Surgery Critical Care)

Trauma is the leading cause of death of young healthy people worldwide, with over 40,000 of these deaths occurring due to gunshot injuries. Coagulopathy, or impaired blood coagulation, is common after trauma and is associated with a 4-fold increased risk of death. Coagulopathy contributes to early death from acute bleeding and also increases risk of later death from delayed complications. However, it is not known how injury type influences early coagulopathy phenotype and how that interplays with prolonged inflammation and mortality after gunshot injuries. We will examine blood clotting and mechanics from patients admitted to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital with traumatic injuries including gunshot victims. Using these patient sample profiles as a guide, we will develop an in vitro model of coagulation following gunshot injury. This will be utilized to test the efficacy of treatments and guide clinical care.

Principal Investigators

• Rachel Choron, MD, FACS (Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences; Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Surgery)
• Chiara Sabina, PhD, MA (Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Social Work; Social Work)

Co-Investigators

• Elaine Hewins, CSW, DVS (Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital)
• Nazsa S. Baker, PhD, MA (Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences; NJ Gun Violence Research Center; School of Public Health)
• Jennifer Geller (Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences; Medical Student)
• Diana Starace, BS (Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences; Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital)
• Amanda Teichman, MD, FACS (Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences; Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Surgery)
• Zachary Englert, DO, FACS (Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences; Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Surgery)

The greatest burden of firearm violence falls upon young men, specifically in the Black and Hispanic communities. These gun violence survivors are an underserved population and it has only recently been recognized that additional medical/surgical, socioeconomic, and mental health supports are desperately needed and desired beyond inpatient care following discharge from the hospital. Therefore, the aim of this project is to establish the Rutgers Gun Violence Care Center (RGVCC) which involves extensive collaboration among surgeons, interventionalists, primary care practitioners, behavior health specialists, and Hospital Violence Intervention Program social workers to provide better clinical outpatient care and improve socioeconomic and mental health resources to survivors. A RWJ medical student will be dedicating a year to fill the role of clinical navigator and researcher; she will coordinate the multidisciplinary collaboration and research efforts. The RGVCC impact and proof of concept will be studied by assessing patient follow up and long-term outcomes among patients utilizing the RGVCC compared to those who did not prior to RGVCC initiation. Additionally, the psychology of violence and complex trauma symptoms experienced by survivors will be evaluated to gain better insight into the psychological, cognitive, and behavioral functioning of the survivors to ultimately provide better trauma informed care.