AI.R-NISTH AI for Social Good Research Grant

AI FOR SOCIAL GOOD RESEARCH GRANT 

Artificial intelligence has significant potential to intervene in some of humanity’s most pressing and challenging problems. As AI systems become more powerful and flexible they have been applied to helping refugees, healthcare, environmental monitoring, assisting those with disabilities, and a range of other humanitarians and societal problems. As AI is deployed in these arenas, it is important to foster and develop interdisciplinary approaches to ensure that AI systems are deployed in ways that are consonant with social values, good governance, and human dignity. "AI for social good" involves investigations of how to best assist, empower, and improve societies and individuals through AI.

Overview of the grant

The current grant is co-funded by Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (AI.R) and NTU Institute of Science and Technology for Humanity (NISTH) at Nanyang Technological University. It seeks interdisciplinary teams to work on AI applied for “social good”. This could include novel applications of AI tools to new domains of humanitarian or social importance, the investigations  that promote the ethical, fair, accountable, or responsible, or research that aims to better understand how AI systems may be regulated, governed, or deployed in “socially responsible” ways.     

The application will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

•  Impact. How will the proposed project address a societal challenge, and to what extent? Is the application grounded in research and data about the problem and the solution? Is there a clear plan to deploy the AI model for real-world impact, and what are the expected outcomes?
• Feasibility. Does the team have a well-­developed, realistic plan to execute the proposal? Does the team have a plan to access a meaningful dataset and technical expertise to apply AI to the problem? Have they identified the right partners and domain experts needed for implementation?
  
• Interdisciplinarity: Does the team draw on approaches or knowledge from multiple disciplines in order to address the problem at hand?
  
• Social value: Does the proposed project use AI or foster the use of AI in ways that promote social values, including, but not limited to, cultural value, human dignity, fairness, justice, equity, or accountability and transparency. 

 
Eligibility

 A team of at least 2 PI’s can apply to this interdisciplinary collaborative research program.

 The team should have at least one full-time faculty member from College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences as PI or Co-PI.

 Funding Details

 Use of the grant funding can include but is not limited to:

• Developing, deploying and evaluating a novel technology-based intervention; 
• Studying the impact of a technology in a particular domain;

 Applications will be considered for funding in the range of $10,000 to $50,000  over a period of 1 year, or for longitudinal studies, 2 years.

Application Details

 NTU Faculty may submit their application via the following link by 15 March 2021, 5pm Singapore local time.

Online Seed Grant Application Form​ (Requires NTU Login)

Only submissions with a fully completed application form and CVs will be accepted for evaluation and assessment for awarding of grants. After an initial review, a subset of applications will be selected to provide additional detail (e.g., budgeting, project 

• AIR-NISTH Grant_Application Form_Offline
• AIR-NISTH Grant_ CV Template
• AIR-NISTH Grant_Timeline_Budget