UCLA Teacher-Scholar alumna Professor Roshini Ramachandran, now at California State University, Monterey Bay, and UCLA Professor Chong Liu have been awarded a $137,000 grant through the AI Funding for Accelerated Study and Transformation (FAST) Challenge.
Their project, “Natural Language Processing tool to analyze lower-division chemistry course evaluations”, will develop a robust natural language processing (NLP) model to analyze student course evaluations in lower-division chemistry courses. The goal is to provide faculty with actionable insights to enhance inclusive teaching practices. Ramachandran expressed optimism, stating that they expect exciting results from this cross-institutional collaboration.
This year, the California Education Learning Lab awarded 25 grants through the AI FAST Challenge: Funding for Accelerated Study and Transformation, a program designed to support nimble, innovative research and development projects within California’s public higher education system.
Nearly 40 unique institutions from the California Community Colleges (CCCs), California State University (CSU), and University of California (UC) systems submitted 61 proposals. Twenty-five projects were selected to receive grants of up to $150,000 for single-institution projects and up to $200,000 for multi-institution projects. Collectively, awarded projects cover multiple disciplines – from math, engineering, computer science, chemistry, and general STEM, to business, humanities, and arts. AI tutoring and platform building, fostering critical thinking skills, and large-scale professional development of faculty are also represented in many of the projects.
About Professor Roshini Ramachandran
Roshini Ramachandran is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at California State University, Monterey Bay. Her materials chemistry research laboratory utilizes inorganic chemistry and nanotechnology to create novel materials with unique surface structures. These materials exhibit fascinating properties—such as color change—that aim to address current challenges in energy, efficiency, and imaging.
Previously, she served as Assistant Director of Curricular Initiatives at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She completed postdoctoral training at UCLA as a Boyer Teacher-Scholar, where she taught undergraduate courses and conducted research in the laboratory of Professor Alex Spokoyny.
About Professor Chong Liu
A UCLA faculty member since 2017, Professor Chong Liu holds the Jeffrey and Helo Zink Endowed Professional Development Term Chair in Chemistry. He earned his B.S. degree in chemistry from Fudan University, China, and completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley.
He later worked as a Lee Kuan Yew Postdoctoral Fellow, sponsored by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. During his fellowship, he collaborated with Professor Daniel Nocera at Harvard University and Professor Pamela Silver at Harvard Medical School. Together, they developed inorganic/bio hybrid systems for solar-driven CO₂ and N₂ fixation with efficiencies surpassing natural counterparts. These groundbreaking studies were published in Science and PNAS, where Liu was a co–first author.
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penjen@g.ucla.edu.
