On March 19, the University of Idaho announced that they received a $4.5 million grant to go toward the implementation of generative AI in administrative processes, increasing efficiency in research management.
This five-year development and research project is being spearheaded by Principal Investigator Sarah Martonick, who serves as the director of the Office of Sponsored Programs, and is funded via the National Science Foundation’s GRANTED program.
In the original announcement from the Institute for Interdisciplinary Data Sciences in February, Martonick shared her stakes in the project, being a first-generation graduate from UI.
“UI is a special place to me,” Martonick said. “It’s where I started my journey, and it’s where I’ve seen firsthand the challenges faced by faculty who are researchers at heart but must navigate complex administrative systems.”
Currently, all grants earned by universities involve substantial amounts of paperwork and information transfer. This workload falls on the shoulders of employees in research management. This burden is felt especially at smaller universities with limited resources.
In the news release, Martonick expressed a desire to utilize AI to establish programs that would more efficiently complete the necessary information transfers, sparing research management employees the tedium and time. The project aims to allow research staff to put more time toward research rather than overhead work.
Chris Nomura, the Vice President of UI’s Office of Research and Economic Development, shared his optimism with The Argonaut. “This will allow us to submit more grants as an institution overall. You could say the more shots we have on goal means the more opportunities we have to score. If these activities increase the number of grants, it will result in more opportunities for students to participate in research.”
He clarified that there will still be human oversight keeping an eye on the program, but recognizes the huge potential AI holds. “AI has already revolutionized many aspects in our lives, and I am certainly proud of the ingenuity and expertise of our team here at UI in developing new and useful tools in this area.”
A generative AI-powered solution is being developed by UI’s Research Computing and Data Services, dubbed The Vandalizer. It is intended to streamline the aforementioned administrative processes. In Fiscal Year 2024, over 400 new awards were processed, taking more than three weeks of annual staff time to process. The same quantity of work could be accomplished with only 20 seconds per document and astounding accuracy by The Vandalizer.
Martonick shared the four major priorities of the project: flexibility, accuracy, reproducibility and security. She said, “Regarding AI ethics considerations, our team includes AI ethics expert [Bert Baumgaertner] to help ensure our project and any tools or infrastructure that we build and utilize is designed within the right framework.”
Students will be able to see the impact of this project in the coming years. Student interns in OSP and IIDS will both have a direct impact on the project and support research administration.
“New grant projects can get started more rapidly, accounting can be more streamlined and efficient and many other administrative and technical aspects of sponsored funding management can benefit,” Martonick said.
This grant expands beyond UI, which is partnering with Southern Utah University as a sub-awardee, with hopes of expanding to three more institutions by the third year of the project.
Julia Kolman can be reached at arg-news@uidaho.com.