Meng Jiang, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award, one of the highest honors awarded to young faculty.
His CAREER research project will develop novel algorithms to improve the quality of intelligent assistance for people with anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses who seek help on social media.
The pandemic and post-pandemic life have prompted many to seek emotional support on social media channels. But these networks individually lack the in-depth knowledge needed to provide effective responses.
Jiang’s CAREER award project, “Synergistic Approaches for Specialized Intelligent Assistance,” seeks to develop a new computational framework for intelligent assistance that will provide better informed, more comprehensive online answers for those seeking mental health support.
Jiang’s project brings together the methods of behavior representation, information extraction and text generation to create a new type of intelligent assistance that can operate in highly specialized domains. The research also has potential applications in data mining, machine learning, and natural language processing, such as technical support and online education.
— Karla Cruise, College of Engineering