Research Roundup
Whether they’re studying eavesdropping insects or applying AI to youth mental health, DU researchers are pursuing bold questions—and uncovering powerful answers.
Deploying AI to screen for depression, anxiety
The need to evaluate the mental health of youth has grown exponentially in recent years, and social work professor Johnny Kim thinks AI can help.
Kim is testing software that analyzes 90-second audio clips of students speaking about their thoughts and feelings. The software, from Ellipsis Health, uses AI to evaluate the audio for signs of anxiety and depression.
“It looks at both the acoustics in terms of how words are said, as well as the semantics—what is said specifically,” Kim told Denver7. "It does not rely on a trained clinician to be able to make observations through non-verbal cues or rely on the adolescent to be able to truthfully answer the questions in order to be able to screen appropriately and accurately.”
The results of this work could have powerful implications for school districts in Colorado, where mental health evaluations are required for students in grades 6-12.
Using social media to predict substance use in unhoused youth
AI is also helping social work professor Anamika Barman-Adhikari shed light on the challenges of young people experiencing homelessness.
Barman-Adhikari and her colleagues are using AI to comb through hundreds of thousands of Facebook posts and survey data to uncover connections between the content of young people’s Facebook posts and their substance use. The study found that unhoused youth often turn to digital platforms to find support and connection or to express their struggles.
“What my data has shown is that as long as we are able to meet these young people’s basic needs and emotional needs and provide them with quality resources, we can find a solution to substance use,” Barman-Adhikari says.
Listen to our interview with Barman-Adhikari on the RadioEd podcast.
Checks and balances: AI and corporate power
In the corporate world, as in the rest of society, AI has evolved from a niche tool to a transformative force. As large corporations leverage it and reap significant rewards, corporate decision-making remains shrouded in secrecy, left to a select few advisors with competing priorities. So how can we ensure corporate executives are serving the best interests of all stakeholders, rather than an elite few?
Law professor Michael Siebecker, who has been researching corporate law and structure for 15 years, believes he’s found the answer: making a slight tweak to the fiduciary framework through the lens of discourse theory. This means adopting rules and incentives that encourage independent expression of ideas, fair participation of corporate constituents in decision-making, consideration of diverse viewpoints, and more.
Harnessing student-powered research to fight neurodegenerative disease
About 7 million Americans live with neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s—and as we get older and live longer, the need for effective treatments is more urgent than ever.
Chemistry professor Sunil Kumar is making great strides toward treating these conditions with research focused on the development of synthetic protein mimetics designed to disrupt disease progression.
Progression occurs, in part, because of abnormal deposits of a protein called alpha-synuclein (aS) that spreads throughout the brain. The protein continues to build over time, and the other brain cells deteriorate, resulting in problems with cognition, motor skills, behavior, and mood.
The mimetics developed by Kumar and his team are used to interrupt the build-up of these aS proteins and preserve motor function and cells in the central nervous system.
If this work succeeds, the next step would be a clinical trial. “In my opinion, it will be very, very hard to keep society running if we do not have treatment for neural degeneration,” Kumar says.
The sounds of survival
Working onsite in Hawaii, associate professor of biological sciences Robin Tinghitella and her team have made progress in understanding how eavesdroppers, animals that secretively listen in on the communication of other species, impact how the animals they are listening to talk to one another.
The Hawaiian parasitoid fly Ormia ochracea produces larvae that live and feed inside the Pacific field cricket. To evade predators like the fly, crickets have altered their songs over time, making them harder to detect. But researchers have found that the fly has evolved in turn, adapting to better pick up on the cricket’s new calls. Scientists describe these shifts in the fly’s hearing and behavior as “evolutionarily labile.”
“The interaction between the cricket and the parasitoid fly is something that people have known about in Hawaii for about the last 35 years, but this is the first time that we’ve ever detected reciprocal evolution on the part of the fly to keep up with changes that are happening in the cricket,” Tinghitella says.
Built with Shorthand