Congratulations to Dr. Wisniewski for being awarded a Secure and Trustworthy Computing (SaTC) National Science Foundation (NSF) grant entitled, “Collaborative Research: SaTC: CORE: Medium: Using Intelligent Conversational Agents to Empower Adolescents to be Resilient Against Cybergrooming,” under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) program (CFDA 47.070). Dr. Wisniewski will be working with Jine-Hee Cho (PI), Lifu Huang (Co-PI), Sang Won Lee (Co-PI), collaborators from Virginia Tech on this $1.2 million dollar effort to develop a technology-enhanced educational program to teach youth how to protect themselves from online sexual exploitation, or “cybergrooming.” The research team will create a conversational agent (chatbot) that allows teens to practice responding to cybergrooming attempts in a safe, interactive environment. To do this, the team will collect conversational data from parents and teens to train the chatbot using natural language processing. They will work with experts in cybersecurity and sex trafficking prevention to ensure the chatbot provides appropriate and effective educational content. The project outcome will demonstrate how artificial intelligence can promote the online safety of youth.
Wisniewski’s SaTC Grant