Call for collaborative student research projects on human-centered AI

The Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), Utrecht University (UU), University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU) and Wageningen University and Research (WUR) established an alliance program on HUMAN autonomy perspective of Artificial Intelligence (HUMAN-AI). The alliance program has two main goals: (1) to advance research collaboration; and (2) to promote student and faculty exchange. The program involves researchers from the four institutes with a shared interest in a human perspective on AI. A key to the success of the program is collaboration between different disciplines, including psychology, industrial design, human-computer interaction, philosophy, sensory science, linguistics, and computer science. More information about the alliance program can be found here.

Key goals

The goal of this call is to encourage researchers (as potential project supervisors) at all four sites to set up small collaborative student research projects that are funded by the alliance program. The projects should have the following features:

• The projects should include new research in the spirit of the content described in the alliance program HUMAN-AI. Broadly speaking, the project will have to address the role of Artificial Intelligence in affecting human autonomy. For example:
• How can an AI system understand the personality, emotions, intentions, and desires of its human user?
• How can an AI system communicate its intentions, decisions, and actions to its human users?
• Assuming a (limited) mutual understanding, how can an AI system adapt its behavior to help human users to achieve their goals, without taking away perceived autonomy?
• These fundamental questions can be examined in a variety of application domains of AI, such as recommender systems, behavior change support systems, medical decision support systems, social robotics.
• A project team should include one or more students from at least one of the four institutes (TU/e, WUR, UU, UMCU) and at least two senior researchers (as supervisors) from different institutes. The project idea proposal (see below) may also include the names of students who are interested in working on the project. The duration of projects is minimum 3 months and maximum 9 months. Preferably, projects are embedded in the local master programs (e.g., as part of a master graduation project).

Application procedure

Step 1: Interested researchers (who will supervise the student projects) will have to find potential collaborator(s) from a partner institute(s) to collaborate on a research project idea. Use the template below to send in your idea proposals.

Step 2: The ideas will be reviewed and approved by the alliance co-ordination team and the project funding will be granted once the researchers find students to work on the reviewed ideas.

In this round of the call, 3-4 projects will be funded by the alliance program with each project receiving a maximum funding of up to €5000.

Important Dates

Idea proposal deadline: 24^th June, 2022

Notification of acceptance: 28^th June, 2022

Applicants (supervisors and/or students) are expected to pitch their project idea at the HUMAN-AI Annual Meeting (date to be confirmed). More info will follow.

Commencement of student projects: Any time before 31^st October 2022.

Contact

Send in your proposal ideas or questions related to the call to Manuel Oliveira (m.j.barbosadeoliveira@uu.nl) or Parvaneh Parvin (parvaneh.parvin@wur.nl).