HRAI Research

HRAI serves as a resource for the University and community partners to provide expertise in the theoretical frameworks, methodologies, and best practices of designing, implementing, and creating responsible computing systems that collaborate with human users to supplement and augment their capabilities.

The lab is committed to advancing Notre Dame’s pursuit of being the leading global Catholic research university, on par with but distinct from the world’s best private universities.

The lab’s work specifically aligns with key areas of the University’s Strategic Framework.

Research Spotlight:

More information about past, current and on-going projects are listed below:

Poverty

  • Transportation Insecurity and Rideshare in South Bend, Indiana | Li, Brockman
    Researchers at the University of Notre Dame, including a group of undergraduate and high school student interns with the Lucy Civic Innovation Lab, analyzed data provided from Uber trips that were taken through the Commuters Trust program, which aims to subsidize rideshare trips for low-income workers in the South Bend region.
    This project received an award as part of The Lucies Societal Impact Awards at the 2024 Lucy Annual Celebration.
  • Inclusive AI for Good: A Pilot Project in the Community of South Bend on Homelessness Mitigation | Curto Rex, Hauenstein, Pfeil
    Funded by the Notre Dame Strategic Plan Seed Grants

Ethics

  • AI Literacy project with Data & Society | Badillo-Urquiola
    Funded by ND-IBM Technology Ethics Lab
  • LLM evaluations to align their behaviors with human values and preferences | Gomez-Zara, Li
    Funded by ND-IBM Technology Ethics Lab
  • Investigating the Online Safety of Youth In Out-of-Home-Care | Badillo-Urquiola
    Funded by Google
  • Responsible Computing Curriculum | Badillo-Urquiola
    Funded Notre Dame Global’s México Faculty Grant
    Read the ND News Story about the project, Visit the project website here
  • Towards Thoughtful and Ethical Integration of Generative AI in Undergraduate Writing Education | Myers, Li, Clauss, Ambrose
    Funded by the Notre Dame Strategic Framework Grant, Read the project proposal
  • AI inequality in Gig Work | Li, Jiang, Kay, Yang, Brockman
    Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation
  • Estimating the Deep-Replicability of Scientific Findings Using Human and Machine Intelligence | Yang, Wu, Uzzi
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117, 2020
  • A discipline-wide investigation of replicability in Psychology over the past 20 years | Yang, Wu, Uzzi
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120, 2023

Democracy

  • An Empathy-Based Sandbox Approach to Bridge the Privacy Gap among Attitudes, Goals, Knowledge, and Behaviors | Li
    New.nd story, ACM publication, Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation
  • Gender-diverse Teams Produce More Novel and Higher Impact Scientific Ideas | Yang, Tian, Woodruff, Jones, Uzzi
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119, 2022

Health & Well-being

  • Accessibility and assistive technologies | Li, Ning
    Read the Nvidia news story about the project

Sustainability

  • Environmental Physical Intelligence | Cheng
    Learn more about Tingyu Cheng's research

Workforce Development

The HRAI is interested in creating responsible AI systems that augment human intellect in complex problem-solving tasks, boost human creativity, and build bridges to facilitate effective team collaboration, especially across disciplinary and cultural boundaries. A particular focus of our work in this area is to enhance inclusivity in work settings, empower under-resourced workers, and facilitate workforce development.

  • AI professional development support for early childhood education teachers | Pentimonti, Li, Johnson
    Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation
  • Designing, building, and evaluating the impact of immersive reality technologies and artificial intelligence on collaborative scientific work | Gomez-Zara
    Funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
  • Examining the effects of gender composition on disruptive science | Gomez-Zara
    Funded by the National Science Foundation
  • Enhancing team effectiveness and cohesion with AI-generated automated feedback | Gomez-Zara
    Funded by Slack, inc.
  • Exploratory Models of Human-AI Teams (EMHAT) | Gomez-Zara, Weninger
    Funded by DARPA
  • A network’s gender composition and communication pattern predict women’s leadership success | Yang, Chawla, Uzzi
    Read the publication
  • AI support for programmers | McMillan, Li
    Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation
  • Luminate and LADICA for facilitating creativity and group sensemaking | Li
    Learn more about Luminate here, and learn more about LADICA here