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Seed Grant Final Presentations 2014-2015

 FIA-Deutsch Seed Grants
Seed Grant Competition

Congratulations to the four teams of FIA-Deutsch Seed Grant Competition winners on their inspiring projects!

The FIA-Deutsch Seed Grant Competition winners presented their final presentations on May 6, 2015. Members of the four winning teams were named FIA-Deutsch Seed Grant Fellows and shared up to $25,000 per team in stipends and expenses to carry out their projects aimed at a variety of information challenges and opportunities.

Altogether, these four teams included 18 students and eight faculty mentors from nine UMD colleges and schools: Arts and Humanities; Behavioral and Social Sciences; Business; Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences; Education; Engineering; Information Studies; Journalism; and Public Health.

The teams consulted with six of the FIA’s Founding Partners during the course of their work, including: the National Park Service; the Barrie School; the Library of Congress; the National Archives; the Smithsonian Institution; and the Newseum.

Flip the Museum: A Platform to Extend the Audience Engagement Life Cycle Through Gamification of Content

  • Amir Kashani-Pour, A. James Clark School of Engineering
  • Christine Herlihy, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences
  • Gaurav Sharma, A. James Clark School of Engineering
  • Lianyi Ma, Robert H. Smith School of Business
  • Yiying Xiao, Robert H. Smith School of Business
  • Dr. Helene Cohen, College of Education (Faculty Mentor)
  • Dr. Marcio A. Oliveira, School of Public Health (Faculty Mentor)

Final Presentation Video | Slides

The group is developing a digital platform that would allow museum visitors to engage with museum content above and beyond the limits of a short visit. This platform would enable visitors to appreciate the importance and context of each exhibit in depth. It would also allow content providers and “experience leaders” (i.e. museum curators, docents, and/or teachers) to become location-based game designers. The platform aims to turn each museum visit into a networked, social experience, and would allow visitors to share their stories and compete on educational/content-based tasks, quizzes, and games in real time. This will make museums and their content more visible, accessible, and appealing to the public. The pedagogical potential is also high: our platform would allow teachers to customize museum visits using the curated games on our mobile app, and the iBeacon technology would let them control and guide the physical aspects of such visits.

iAnon: Third Party Application for Cyberbullying Detection and Mitigation

  • Zahra Ashktorab, College of Information Studies
  • Soham De, College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences
  • Srijan Kumar, College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences
  • Dr. Jennifer Golbeck, College of Information Studies (Faculty Mentor)
  • Dr. Jessica Vitak, College of Information Studies (Faculty Mentor)

Final Presentation Video | Slides

The team is developing a tool that allows do-gooders to send victims of cyberbullying positive and supportive messages. They have been working closely with the Barrie School to develop surveys and conduct participatory design that influenced the design and implementation of the iAnon system. In the participatory design sessions, the team created cyberbullying scenarios with the students based on their world knowledge and experiences and asked students to share ideas about their methods of intervention and help in the bullying scenarios. They also conducted surveys with students about their experiences regarding support-seeking behavior when they are bullied. All of this data is being used in the design and implementation of the cyberbullying-detection mitigation system, iAnon.

Revisiting Segregation through Computational History: the case of the WWII Japanese American Tule Lake Segregation Center

  • Drew Barker, College of Information Studies
  • James Howland, College of Information Studies
  • Emily Keithley, College of Information Studies
  • Liz Tobey, College of Information Studies
  • Karen Mawdsley, Philip Merrill College of Journalism
  • Dr. Richard Marciano, College of Information Studies (Faculty Mentor)
  • Dr. Nicholas Diakopoulos, Philip Merrill College of Journalism (Faculty Mentor)

Final Presentation Video | Slides | Project Write-up

The team explores the integration of archival and user-contributed data and investigates and prototypes a GIS platform that links people, places, and events from distributed sources. The approach is based on a case study involving WWII Japanese American incarceration camp archival records from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). These records are examined for their potential to generate new forms of archival analysis and historical research engagement at the Tule Lake Unit, a recently established National Monument of the National Park Service (NPS) through a December 2008 Presidential proclamation. The project works closely with NARA staff from the Office of Innovation (and Digitization Division), and NPS staff from the Center for Media Services at Harpers Ferry. Advisors include NPS Tule Lake Unit staff as well as prominent Tule Lake historians, colleagues from King’s College London, and experts from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. The project has the potential to contribute to a number of national and international initiatives.

Through Venetian Eyes

  • Karl Dempsey, College of Arts and Humanities
  • Andrew Ethnasios, College of Arts and Humanities
  • Brandon Perlman, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences
  • Henry Twist, College of Education
  • Ashley Vogel, College of Arts and Humanities
  • Dr. Bernard Cooperman, College of Arts and Humanities (Faculty Mentor)
  • Dr. Stefano Villani, College of Arts and Humanities (Faculty Mentor)
  • Graduate Consultant: Kate Bailey, College of Arts and Humanities

Final Presentation Video | Slides

Through Venetian Eyes is an interactive web-based experience that will bring Renaissance Venice alive through primary sources—original sources from that time period. It will strive to make primary sources, some of which have never been translated before, accessible through multimedia presentations that can be accessed through a web browser. The project is intimately concerned with collaboration, as part of the challenge comes from working with at least 6 partners, including one from Italy. This online interactive resource will introduce users to primary source scholarship and guide them to the partner institutions.

Videos by Brandi Vincent

Robert W. Deutsch Foundation This competition is made possible by funding from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation. More information about the Seed Grant program can be found on the Seed Grants page. The award-winning teams were chosen from among 12 semifinalist groups after making five-minute pitches in a public program at McKeldin Library on Dec. 10, 2014. The judges were: Maggie Saponaro, University of Maryland librarian and FIA Brainstorming Board member; Eric Chapman, Assistant Vice President for Research Development in the Office of the Vice President for Research; Bryan Eichhorn, a member of the FIA Brainstorming Board and a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and an Affiliate Professor in Materials Science and Engineering; FIA co-director Allison Druin, Professor in the iSchool and Chief Futurist in the Office of the Vice President for Research; and FIA co-director Ira Chinoy, Associate Dean and Associate Professor in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism. This is the third year of the FIA-Deutsch competition. A list of the winners from other years and video stories about each can be found here, along with videos of their final project presentations.

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