The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute (CITRIS) at UC Merced in partnership with the UC Merced Office of Technology, Innovation, and Industry Relations (OTIIR) are proud to announce the recipients of the 2026 Innovation for Impact (I2) Awards. In this inaugural award year, six UC Merced faculty will receive funding to propel their innovative proof-of-concept research into technology solutions addressing a pressing societal challenge.
OTIIR and CITRIS at UC Merced have partnered on this new seed award program to drive UC Merced faculty innovation and provide early-stage funding to projects with high commercialization potential and strong societal benefit.
The following projects received 2026 I2 awards:
Steer responsibly: Learning diverse, interpretable steering directions from human feedback
Principal Investigator: Wan Du, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering
Agentic AI and adaptive vision-language hazard perception for open-world safety in mixed-autonomy transportation
Principal Investigator: Ross Greer, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering
Experimental validation of computationally-identified FDA-approved compounds for anti-Coccidioides activity
Principal Investigator: Katrina Hoyer, Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology
Drone Mapping for Agrivoltaics
Principal Investigator: Sarah Kurtz, Professor of Electrical Engineering
AgriVolt Advisor: A Decision-Support Platform for Agrivoltaic Adoption in California’s Water-Stressed San Joaquin Valley
Principal Investigator: Josué Medellín-Azuara, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
HEAT-CaRe: Mapping heatwave responses of pollinator-dependent crops to ensure resilience in California Food Production
Principal Investigator: Marilia Palumbo Gaiarsa, Assistant Professor of Life and Environmental Sciences
