Data Science Faculty Awarded Jefferson Trust Grant to Advance AI-Empowered Student Support

The University of Virginia School of Data Science is proud to announce that three of its faculty members—Mai Dahshan, Assistant Professor of Data Science; Prince Afriyie, Associate Professor of Data Science; and Gianluca Guadagni, Associate Professor of Data Science—have received a Jefferson Trust grant of $154,543 to launch their project, Personalized Student Support and Stronger, AI-Empowered Teaching Assistants. The initiative aims to transform the student learning experience by integrating artificial intelligence into classrooms in responsible, supportive, and human-centered ways.

The grant will fund the design, testing, and deployment of AI-based teaching assistant tools that provide students with more personalized academic support while also strengthening the capabilities of human teaching assistants. Faculty and TAs often face high workloads in courses that enroll hundreds of students, making it difficult to provide individualized guidance. By developing AI systems that can deliver explanations, real-time feedback, and supplemental instruction, the project team seeks to ensure that every student has access to timely support.

“Students learn best when they feel supported at the right moment,” said Dahshan. “By combining AI tools with the expertise of instructors and teaching assistants, we can create a learning environment that is both more responsive and more equitable.” Afriyie added, “Our vision is not to replace human interaction, but to augment it with AI. We want to free up teaching assistants to do what they do best—support students personally—while AI provides scalable assistance in the background.”

Guadagni emphasized that the project’s impact extends far beyond two courses in the School of Data Science. “We are creating a new framework to design not only our courses, but all higher education courses. By implementing retrieval-augmented generation and modeling TA interactions, we will provide practical evidence of what AI can look like embedded in a classroom,” he said.

The team’s goal is to deliver a tool that is affordable and scalable, one that can be used by instructors at the School of Data Science, across the University of Virginia, and ultimately by community colleges and other Virginia public universities. As an AI Faculty Guide with the Center for Teaching Excellence this year, Guadagni will also work to raise awareness among faculty across Grounds about how AI can be responsibly integrated into teaching and learning.

The Jefferson Trust, an initiative of the UVA Alumni Association, funds projects with the potential to make a lasting impact on the University community. This award reflects confidence in the project’s ability to redefine classroom support at UVA and beyond.

“This grant is a powerful endorsement of the creativity and vision of our faculty,” said Stephen Turner, associate professor of data science and assistant dean of research. “We are excited to see Professors Dahshan, Afriyie, and Guadagni bring this idea to life and set a model for how data science and artificial intelligence can strengthen education for the common good.”

Over the next two years, the faculty team will build, pilot, and refine the AI teaching assistant tools in UVA classrooms, with the long-term goal of creating a framework that can be scaled across disciplines and shared with institutions nationwide. “Ultimately, this work is about equity and access,” said Guadagni. “Every student deserves personalized support, and with the help of AI, we can get closer to making that a reality.”

The School of Data Science celebrates this milestone as an example of how its faculty are pushing the boundaries of responsible data science, creating innovations that directly benefit students, teachers, and the broader educational community.