The University of Florida has named 12 UF faculty members as Trust Consortium Scholars and funded two post-doctoral associate positions as part of the University’s Consortium on Trust in Media and Technology initiative.
The scholars include faculty from four UF colleges studying the issues of trust from multiple perspectives. Projects include examinations of the effects of artificial intelligence on the creation of “deep fakes” and data infrastructure, to strategies on improving digital literacy and organizational communication. Trust Consortium Scholars will serve 18-month terms.
The Consortium on Trust in Media and Technology is a transdisciplinary initiative that will study how media and technology can become more trustworthy and develop and test innovative methods for improving society’s confidence in the fourth estate.
Throughout their appointment, each trust scholar will work on three to five pieces of public scholarship designed for non-academic audiences, and engage with trust scholars at UF and other institutions on collaborative, multidisciplinary research projects. Scholars will receive a $5,000 stipend or research fund for their work with the Consortium.
The inaugural class of scholars can be viewed at http://trust.jou.ufl.edu/scholars/.
Post-doctoral associate funding was awarded to Dr. Duncan Purves, assistant professor of Philosophy in the UF College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS), to support his project on “Artificial Intelligence and Predictive Policing: An Ethical Analysis.” Drs. Jason von Meding, associate professor in the M.E. Rinker, Sr. School of Construction Management, and Colin Tucker Smith, assistant professor in the CLAS Department of Psychology, were awarded funding for a post-doctoral associate to collaborate in their emerging research bringing together the fields of disaster risk reduction and social psychology.
