Faculty in Grand Valley State University’s College of Computing secured more than $2.3 million in new grants and sponsored projects during the first quarter of fiscal year 2027. This number now exceeds more than ten times what the college brought in during all of 2024.

The nine awards came from four federal agencies including the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the National Security Agency, Comcast, BridgeSpace, and two industry partners. These awards will fund work ranging from trustworthy artificial intelligence and network security to navigation tools for people who experience visual impairment.

“The nine most recent awards reflect growing national and industry confidence in GVSU researchers,” explains Marouane Kessentini, dean of the College of Computing. “They create new opportunities for faculty collaboration, student research, and partnerships focused on some of today’s most pressing challenges in technology.”

The results track the college’s Strategic Plan 2030, which makes advancing research and innovation one of its three priorities through expanding impactful, relevant research and positioning the college as the engine of West Michigan’s entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem.

The largest of the awards were secured through competitive, peer-reviewed federal funding programs, demonstrating the strength of the college’s research at the national level. Funded projects support graduate assistants and postdoctoral researchers, produce the preliminary results that anchor the next round of proposals, and help recruit faculty with goals of building research programs of their own.

The quarter’s largest awards

Dr. Samah Mansour, Associate Dean for Access, Convergence and Strategic Partnerships, received more than $1 million from NIST to establish the West Michigan Trustworthy AI Consortium. The consortium, which officially launched Oct. 5, is led by Mansour as executive director. The award reflects the growing national importance of trustworthy AI and positions GVSU to bring West Michigan’s tech expertise to the development and use of AI systems that are reliable, secure, and worthy of public trust.

Dr. Paul Fink, assistant professor and director of the college’s graduate human-centered computing program, received two NIH awards totaling more than $708,000. One project will work to develop a gamified, multisensory training and navigation system; the other will build accessibility-aware path selection into wayfinding tools. Fink also secured an industry contract to conduct usability and technology evaluation for BridgeSpace.

Two NSF awards totaling more than $353,000 will support Kessentini’s work developing shared research infrastructure for studying software refactoring, quality and security.

Additional first-quarter awards

$81,505 from the National Security Agency was awarded to Andrew Kalafut, full professor and director of the Institute of Cybersecurity Education & Research, to support GVSU’s 2027 GenCyber program.

$79,777 from Comcast was awarded to Sara Sutton, assistant professor of information sciences and technologies, for research on quantum-aware software-defined network security.

$61,493 from Comcast was awarded to Erik Fredericks, associate professor of computer science, to explore improving network performance through evolutionary computation.

What the funding makes possible

“Research helps turn expertise into action,” says Kessentini, “by developing technologies, improving accessibility, strengthening cybersecurity, preparing the workforce and addressing challenges that affect people’s lives.”

For students, that means moving from learning what is already known to helping create new knowledge. Working alongside faculty on funded projects, students ask questions, test ideas, analyze evidence and develop solutions to problems that do not have easy answers. For faculty, external funding expands the capacity to pursue ambitious research, build partnerships and contribute to their fields at the national level.

The growth comes alongside Van Andel Institute’s significant philanthropic investment to launch the AI Research and Innovation Institute (AIRII) at GVSU, together with the university’s first doctoral program, a Ph.D. in Computing, further expanding opportunities for applied AI research, collaboration and innovation in biomedical discovery.

The momentum also feeds directly into GVSU’s Blue Dot Ecosystem, the university’s growing network of partnerships, technology and innovation that connects students, researchers, businesses and community organizations across West Michigan. Externally funded research is one of the ecosystem’s engines. It brings federal and industry partners to the table, creates paid research roles for students, and generates the ideas and tools that move from campus into the region.

Together, these investments are building a research culture in which faculty and students tackle complex problems, collaborate across disciplines and work directly with industry, government and community partners. “This is a starting point, not a finish line,” Kessentini says. “With the Trustworthy AI Consortium, AIRII and our first Ph.D. program all launching this year, our faculty now have the infrastructure to compete for larger, multi-year awards, and our students will be in the room when that work happens.”