News

The University of Michigan recently announced the inaugural recipients of the Strategic Initiative Fund (SIF), a major 10-year investment designed to propel transformational, cross-disciplinary ideas aligned with U-M’s Look to Michigan vision.

Selected from nearly 500 proposals submitted across all three U-M campuses, 37 projects received funding to advance solutions in human health, advanced technology, democracy, and education.

Among the funded teams are several Eisenberg Family Depression Center members leading and collaborating on pioneering initiatives that bridge artificial intelligence, health science, and public trust. 

AI-Enabled Scalable Training for Global Mental Health Service Providers

• Project contact: Rada Mihalcea, PhD, Computer Science & Engineering 
• Secondary contacts:  Lynae Darbes, PhD, School of Nursing; and John D. Piette, PhD, MPH, School of Public Health
• Project summary: Investigators are harnessing artificial intelligence to expand mental health access worldwide. To address the critical shortage of trained counselors in low- and middle-income countries, their team is building an AI-enabled, culturally adapted platform for counselor training and assessment. Combining natural language processing with community-grounded research, the initiative will initially support Spanish-language training in Latin America and isiZulu-language training in South Africa. Read full project summary

"We are thrilled to receive Strategic Initiative Funding that expands our work in training mental health practitioners using AI-enabled platforms,” said Mihalcea. “We anticipate that tailoring our previous work for language and culture for use in low- to middle-income countries will have a tremendous positive impact for the practitioners and, most importantly, the communities they serve."

Creating connections across disciplines 

The partnership between Mihalcea and Darbes was sparked at a Collaborative Minds event hosted by the Eisenberg Family Depression Center last fall. One of four speed networking events held over the past year, the goal is to bring together bold thinkers and brilliant minds from across the University of Michigan who are passionate about mental health and well-being.

"I've worked with communities in South Africa for years and have seen the enormous impact that even small initiatives and resources can make,” said Darbes. “When I spoke with Dr. Mihalcea at the Collaborative Minds event, we realized that we shared an interest in improving counseling, and thus an idea was born. At this large university, it’s easy to get siloed and not connect with people from other disciplines with whom you may be able to create new and innovative ideas, so these types of events are crucial to foster new connections." 

Both investigators received Depression Center 2025 Impact Grants, a program that awarded more than $450,000 in total funding to U-M scholars. Mihalcea’s Impact Grant project uses large language models to train mental health providers, while Darbes’ study focused on couples-based treatment for depression in South Africa.

“These two projects, led by talented investigators in different fields, are each incredibly promising. But the potential impact of the projects together is even greater and represents precisely the type of interdisciplinary collaboration the Depression Center aims to help facilitate,” said Srijan Sen, MD, PhD, director of the Eisenberg Family Depression Center.

The spirit of cross-disciplinary collaboration extends throughout the other SIF-funded initiatives involving Depression Center members:

Integrated Photonics for Low-Cost At-Home Biomarker Sensors

• Project contact: Xudong (Sherman) Fan, PhD, Biomedical Engineering 
• Secondary contacts:  Di Liang, PhD, College of Engineering; Shrinivas Bishu, MD, Gastroenterology; Mark Ilgen, PhD, Department of Psychiatry; Sarah Sperry, PhD, Department of Psychiatry.  
• Project summary: This initiative fuses high-tech engineering with clinical psychiatry. The team is creating ultralow-cost, at-home photonic biosensors to track biological markers for chronic conditions, focusing initially on bipolar disorder and inflammatory bowel disease. The scalable, at-home technology aims to empower patients and providers with real-time data for earlier diagnosis, timely intervention, and personalized care. Read full project summary

The Michigan Deepfake Resilience Hub

• Project contact: Khalid Mahmood Malik, PhD, U-M Flint, College of Innovation & Technology
• Secondary contacts: Rada Mihalcea, PhD, U-M, Computer Science & Engineering; Hafiz Malik, PhD, U-M Dearborn, College of Engineering & Computer Science; Cliff Lampe, PhD, U-M School of Information 
• Project summary: The Resilience Hub is a tri-campus effort to address the growing challenge of machine-manipulated media. The hub combines explainable AI, human-centered design, and public education to detect synthetic content and protect against AI-generated fraud. By developing accessible verification tools and training community "Digital Integrity Ambassadors," the hub aims to defend public trust across government, education, and media. Read full project summary

Congratulations to our members and colleagues across U-M on these groundbreaking awards. Through the Strategic Initiative Fund, Center members will continue driving innovations that transform mental health care, enhance public well-being,  and serve communities across Michigan and around the world.

Learn more about the Strategic Initiative Fund at the University of Michigan.