Trinity Funds Four New Faculty-Led Research Initiatives

Trinity College of Arts & Sciences is increasing its support for early-stage interdisciplinary research efforts with new funding for four faculty-led research initiatives designed to foster collaboration across the social sciences, natural sciences and arts & humanities. 

The projects — spanning biodiversity, statistics, mental health, philosophy, cultural heritage and data science — came out of a competitive call for proposals launched last year. Two initiatives, Causality at Duke and BioTA: Biodiversity Through Arts, will each receive $150,000 in seed funding across the next three years, while two projects focused on peer mental health support and cultural heritage imaging will each receive $10,000 to support their efforts. 

Together, the initiatives reflect Trinity’s growing investment in research that brings together scholars from different fields to address complex questions. 

BioTA: Biodiversity Through Arts

One of the newly funded initiatives, BioTA: Biodiversity Through Arts, addresses the false narrative that places nature in opposition to human flourishing by exploring how biodiversity can be understood not only in a natural sciences context, but also in a cultural and human one.

Led by faculty from Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Theater Studies, Biology, Romance Studies, Computer Science and Religious Studies, the initiative will develop digital tools that allow researchers to study biodiversity collections in new ways. One major focus is building AI-powered search tools and databases that make botanical collections more accessible to artists, historians and humanities scholars. This work includes documenting Indigenous, vernacular and historical plant names often absent from scientific databases, facilitating the reciprocal exchange of information between the sciences, the humanities and the arts. 

“This project grew out of frustration with the lack of attention given to biodiversity loss in recent public discourse, and also frustration as a researcher in the humanities trying to navigate digitized natural history collections,” said Andrew Griebeler, Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Art, Art History & Visual Studies and the initiative’s lead.  

“It also grew out of an awareness that historical methods in the humanities could be of use to biodiversity researchers. As we think about the immediate and long-term future, awareness of species’ historical distributions and cultural value becomes ever more essential,” he added. 

The project draws on Duke’s extensive biodiversity infrastructure — including Duke Forest, Duke Gardens, and the Duke Marine Lab — while also incorporating artist residencies, workshops and student research opportunities. 

Causality at Duke

Another fully funded initiative, Causality at Duke, aims to establish Trinity as a hub for interdisciplinary research on causal reasoning — the study of how researchers determine what causes what in systems with multiple interacting variables. 

The initiative brings together faculty in Statistical Science, Philosophy, Economics and Computer Science to address questions that have become increasingly urgent in areas ranging from artificial intelligence and healthcare to public policy and digital platforms. The team will examine how causal claims can be formed and tested in systems where outcomes change over time, how feedback loops alter behavior and how many mechanisms remain only partially observable. 

Alexander Volfovsky, associate professor of Statistical Science and initiative lead, emphasizes that the project is a group effort borne of pre-existing as well as anticipated collaborations. “There are many different work streams at Duke, and many people working on questions of causality, in Computer Science, in Statistics, in Economics, in Philosophy — and also outside of Trinity, at the School of Medicine, Fuqua, Pratt and Sanford,” he said.  “So it was a natural thing to try to say, ‘Look, everybody is struggling with the same questions, we're all doing the same stuff, we should find a common place to do it in.’” 

Causality at Duke will create durable infrastructure to expand upon these collaborations and facilitate new ones, through workshops, visiting scholars, graduate training programs and student-centered research groups. An IID Pop-Up Institute planned for 2027 will focus on causal reasoning in adaptive systems such as AI-assisted decision-making environments and online platforms. 

Community Building and Beyond

In addition to the two fully funded initiatives, Trinity also selected two projects for funding to advance community building and programmatic activities in support of their research. 

One of those initiatives, Peer Support: Improving the Quality of Human Connection to Enhance Student Mental Health, builds upon DukeLine, Duke’s anonymous peer-to-peer mental health support text service. The project brings together faculty in Psychology & Neuroscience, Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Population Health Sciences and Electrical & Computing Engineering to study what kinds of communication behaviors help people feel understood, supported and emotionally connected. 

Using more than 1,500 hours of anonymized peer-support conversations, researchers will combine clinical science, qualitative analysis and computational modeling to study the mechanisms of interpersonal validation — the experience of feeling seen, heard and valued. The findings could help improve peer-support training, student mental health interventions and broader approaches to communication and well-being. 

The other project funded at this level, Building a Duke Community for Imaging and Artificial Intelligence in Cultural Heritage, will bring together researchers in Chemistry; Physics; Mathematics; Art, Art History & Visual Studies; and Evolutionary Anthropology to develop new imaging and AI tools for studying and preserving artworks and historical objects. 

The project builds on existing collaborations with the Nasher Museum of Art, the North Carolina Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art to explore applications ranging from pigment analysis and artwork attribution to the reconstruction of ancient sculptures and textiles. Organizers also plan public-facing educational programming and interdisciplinary coursework connecting science, technology and cultural heritage research. 

The new initiatives expand Trinity’s efforts to support interdisciplinary research efforts at an early stage, with the Duke SPACE Initiative and Society-Centered AI Initiative (SCAI) previously receiving seed funding from the college. Like SPACE and SCAI, the newly funded projects aim at creating long-term intellectual communities through workshops, shared research infrastructure, public programming and student engagement. 

"Through its support of these initiatives, Trinity is expanding its commitment to interdisciplinary exploration — the free exchange of ideas across the sciences, humanities, and arts that has always been the heart of a liberal arts education," said Trinity College of Arts & Sciences Dean Gary Bennett. "We hope this initial investment propels this work forward and helps build long-term collaborations that generate not just new discoveries, but new ways of understanding the world." 

In addition to Griebeler, the team leading BioTA: Biodiversity Through Arts includes Torry Bend, professor of the practice of Theater Studies; Sina Farsiu, Anderson-Rupp Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science, and Electrical & Computer Engineering; Fay-Wei Li, associate professor of Biology; Mark Olson, associate professor of the practice of Art, Art History & Visual Studies; Natalia Pabon-Mora, associate professor of Biology; Liliana Paredes, professor of the practice of Romance Studies; Raquel Salvatella de Prada, associate professor of the practice of Art, Art History & Visual Studies; Raffaella Taylor-Seymour, assistant professor of Religious Studies; Victoria Szabo, research professor of Art, Art History, & Visual Studies; and Hannah Jacobs and Jodi Psoter from the Duke Libraries.  

In addition to Volfovsky, the team leading Causality at Duke includes Reuben Stern, assistant professor of Philosophy; Benjamin Eva, associate professor of Philosophy; Matthew Masten, associate professor of Economics; and Cynthia Rudin, Gilbert, Louis, and Edward Lehrman Distinguished Professor of Computer Science.  

The team leading Peer Support includes Nancy Zucker, professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Psychology & Neuroscience; Cristina Salvador, Susan W. Beltz and A. Morris Williams, Jr. Assistant Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience; Sarah Gaither, Nicholas J. and Theresa M. Leonardy Associate Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience; Guillermo Sapiro, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Electrical & Computer Engineering; Elena Tenenbaum, assistant professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Psychology & Neuroscience; and Valerie Smith, professor of Population Health Sciences. 

The Trinity faculty leading Building a Duke Community for Imaging and Artificial Intelligence in Cultural Heritage will be Martin Fischer, research professor of Chemistry; Warren Warren, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Chemistry; Dorian Canelas, associate professor of the practice of Chemistry; Ed Triplett, assistant professor of the practice of Art, Art History & Visual Studies; Ingrid Daubechies, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Mathematics; Julia McHugh, adjunct assistant professor of Art, Art History & Visual Studies; and Douglas Boyer, associate professor of Evolutionary Anthropology. The research team will be complemented by David Carlson, Yoh Family Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Aaron Kutnick, IT analyst in Art, Art History & Visual Studies; Roarke Horstmeyer, assistant professor of Biomedical Engineering; Katherine Werwie, the Waldron Family Associate Curator at the Nasher Museum; Shira Faigenbaum Golovin at Bar-Ilan University in Israel; Samantha Skelton at the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) and John Delaney at the National Gallery of Art (NGA).