Georgia State University has announced the second round of internal grant recipients for 2026 under its new, restructured Faculty Internal Grants Program. In this round, 20 faculty members will receive funding for projects spanning fields from psychology to computer science to film.

Previously offered as three separate opportunities — the Research Initiation Grant, the Scholarly Support Grant and the Arts & Humanities Grant — the grant program was updated in line with the university’s strategic plan and the commitment to reimagining research administration. This updated format offers flexible, twice-yearly funding options that better align with diverse research needs, and it doubles the amount of internal funding available for research and scholarly work.

In total, the program has awarded more than $644,000 to support research and creative activity across the university in 2026, and the number of awards has increased from 21 to 34, a rise of more than 60%.

The most recent awardees include:

• Eyal Aharoni, Psychology – AI-Assisted Medical Triage: Predicting, Explaining and Mitigating Performance Errors in Collaborative Human-AI Emergency Response Training
• Jennifer Austin, Learning Sciences – Enacting Trauma-Informed, Classroom-Based Behavior Support Practices for Children Who Have Experienced Homelessness
• Elizabeth Barahona, History – Shared Struggle, Collective Power: Black and Latino Activism in Durham, North Carolina 1980–2010
• Lauren Beasley, Kinesiology & Health – The Social Work of Sport: Sport and Individual, Community and Cultural Well-Being
• Hemanth Kumar Demakethepalli Venkateswara, Computer Science – LEAD: Locomotion Enhancement through Assisted Direction
• Daniel Dixon, Applied Linguistics & English as a Second Language – From Tasks to Quests: Evaluating, Evolving and Gamifying a Task-Based GenAI Platform for Second Language (L2) Development
• Kate Fortmueller, School of Film, Media & Theatre – Risky Business: Risk and Reward in the U.S. Media Industries
• Douglas Gies, Physics & Astronomy – CHARA Array Adaptive Optics Board Upgrade
• Christopher Kocela, English – Beyond Buddhist Modernism
• Gabriel Kuperminc, Psychology – Innovation in Youth Mentoring: Evaluating the BBBSMA Level Up Program
• Tingting Liu, Physics & Astronomy – A New Piercing Eye on the Sky: Preparing for the Athena X-ray Observatory
• Jennifer Patico, Anthropology – Proposal to Support Russian-Language Translation and Publication of Consumption and Social Change in a Post-Soviet Middle Class
• Sarah Pope, Psychology – Do Other Primates Doomscroll? A Multi-Species Look at Negativity Bias in Digital Content Selection
• Eric Sevigny, Criminal Justice & Criminology – Life and Death Behind Bars: Patterns and Predictors of Preventable Violent and Injury-Related Mortality in U.S. Correctional Facilities
• Ruth Stanford, Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design – Artist's Book: Landscapes, Portals and Other Corners of the Universe
• Jeffrey Vagle, College of Law – The Tech Ideology: How the Politics of Silicon Valley Evolved to Become an Anti-Democratic Quest for Oligarchic Power
• Katherine Wetzel, Biology – Determining Requirements for Phage Infection of Mycobacteria
• Kathryn Wilson, History – Three New South Cities: Race, Place and Memory in Atlanta’s Suburbs
• Chunhua Yang, Institute for Biomedical Sciences – Establishing a Human Colonic Biopsy-Based Platform for Drug Screening in Ulcerative Colitis
• Feng Yang, Kinesiology & Health – Efficacy of Judo Training on Reducing Falls in Older Adults

To learn more about the Faculty Internal Grants Program, and submit applications for future funding cycles, visit Georgia State’s Internal Grants Program website. For more information about Georgia State University research and its impact, visit research.gsu.edu.