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Following a rigorous review process led by CUNY’s Office of Academic Innovation Implementation, CUNY SPH faculty have been awarded a total of $121,750 in AI Innovation Fund grants.
The projects were selected for funding based on their potential to expand AI literacy, enhance teaching and learning, and support responsible AI use across the curriculum.
Principal Investigator: Associate Professor Spring Cooper
Understanding Student Attitudes Toward AI to Develop an Ethical AI Literacy Module for CUNY SPH: Student Module for AI Readiness Training (CUNY SMART)
$25,000
The rapid expansion of generative AI in academia and public health presents both opportunities and challenges for CUNY students, who currently lack structured support regarding responsible, ethical, and equity-centered use. CUNY SMART ultimately provides a practical, innovative, ethics-centered educational module to deepen students’ understanding of AI and create a replicable model for CUNY. The research team will assess student needs by conducting and analyzing focus groups with CUNY SPH students to understand their current AI usage, confidence, risks, benefits, and support gaps. Findings from will inform the creation of a comprehensive AI Literacy and Responsible Use Module tailored for CUNY student development and coursework.
Principal Investigator: Assistant Professor Ann Gaba
Development of a New Course: FNPH 695 Informatics and AI Applications in Public Health Nutrition
$24,000
Nutrition Informatics is the practice of taking systematically acquired data and applying it to nutrition questions to create applicable knowledge. This new course will explore the value of cross-pollination of the principals of informatics methodology into applications for public health nutrition. It will examine the use of data from a variety of sources to identify trends to guide planning and intervention. Applicable uses of artificial intelligence in these practices will be discussed and critically evaluated.
Principal Investigator: Professor Bruce Y. Lee
Expanding A Course on The Use of AI in Health and Public Health
$25,000
In the Spring of 2025, the Center for Advanced Technology and Communications in Health (CATCH) launched the first ever Introduction to AI course at CUNY SPH. Students indicated that they enjoyed the course and found it very helpful, which motivated Dr. Lee to apply for AI Innovation funding to further augment the course and create an asynchronous version to increase its reach. He also wanted to lay the groundwork for other versions of the course, such as ones that can be taught in shorter time frames for busy professionals.
Principal Investigator: Assistant Professor Nash Rochman
Responsibly bringing agentic AI into the classroom
$25,000
Using AI tools to automate repetitive workflows is becoming standard practice in industry; however, students performing computational work struggle to identify which tasks can be effectively or responsibly automated. Dr. Rochman and colleagues are developing two courses: a 3-credit elective, “Agentic Systems for Health Analytics,” and a self-paced online module, “AI Governance, Data Sovereignty, and Regulatory Compliance.” Agentic Systems for Health Analytics will provide students an opportunity for supervised, hands-on construction of agentic AI workflows enabling them to perform work that would be impractical without task automation. These agents will be maintained by CUNY SPH within an AI Agent Library emulating enterprise AI deployment. Over time, this library will serve to build AI capacity across CUNY as well as provide students with visible, publicly accessible portfolio projects.
Principal Investigator: Assistant Professor Karmen Williams
CUNY AI Navigator for Mental Health, Safety, and Health Insurance
$22,750
Dr. Williams and colleagues will create an AI-powered navigator tool to help students understand and access CUNY-specific mental health resources, safety protocols, legal support, and health insurance information. The tool would be multilingual, culturally responsive, and built using only pre-approved CUNY documents, policies, and resource lists. By collaborating with Student Affairs, Legal Counsel, the Office of International Affairs, student organizations, and Communications, the project will gather accurate content to train the system responsibly.
To ensure the tool reflects student needs, the team will conduct focus groups and interviews with up to 100 students, offering incentives. These sessions will explore students’ awareness, challenges, and preferences regarding mental health services, campus safety, legal supports, and understanding of health insurance. Findings will directly inform the design and functionality of the AI navigator, which can be integrated into a CUNY webpage for easy, centralized access.
These five CUNY SPH grants make up nearly 25% of the total $500,000 AI Innovation funds distributed university-wide, a testament to the important work happening on our campus.
“The widespread support across all departments reflects the remarkable strength and creativity of our faculty,” says CUNY SPH Dean Ayman El-Mohandes. “We can take great pride in this collective achievement and eagerly anticipate its positive impact across CUNY in the years ahead.”
