Diane McFarlin said the world is suffering from a crisis of trust.
McFarlin, the dean of UF’s College of Journalism and Communications, is one of the leaders on a $17 million initiative to fund individual research projects. The eight projects, called “moonshots,” bring different departments together to find solutions to broad challenges like media distrust.
The journalism college’s project will establish UF as a leading resource in media and technology, McFarlin said. UF is bringing together scholars from engineering and liberal arts departments to monitor trust in the age of fake news and help readers filter out fact from fiction, she said.
“People are bombarded with messages of uneven veracity, and third parties — search engines, social media outlets — have become information brokers that are vulnerable to manipulation,” she said.
The broader initiative, which is funded by UF, will last for three to four years, said UF Provost and initiative coordinator Joseph Glover. Each moonshot is led by a college dean and other faculty members.
UF whittled down 18 ideas three months ago to settle on the eight projects, which include cancerous tumor research and placing scientists in every Florida K-12 school, Glover said.
“They are called moonshots because we may not actually solve the problem in my lifetime,” Glover said. “But it is more about the journey than it is the destination.”
McFarlin believes the moonshots will raise UF’s position as a public research university. The initial cost for the first two years of the journalism school’s project is about $1 million, she said.
Universities like UF should use their resources to tackle complicated scientific and social problems, Glover said.
“Most importantly, we are preparing the next generation to live and prosper in that new platform for their lives,” he said.
Contact McKenna Beery at mbeery@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter at @mckennabeery
iCoast: a 21st Century Coastal Monitoring Network for Action– The Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering and the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience are going to work on a project to collect data on coastlines around the world.
Cancer Engineering – 3D Brain Tumors for Cancer Research – Using patented technology of 3D soft-tissue systems, manufactured by a team of engineers and doctors at UF, in combination with other new equipment for microscopic studies for tumors, this team will identify the steps and mechanisms at work in tumor growth and treatment.
Consortium on Trust in Media and Technology – UF is aiming to bring together students from journalism and communications, engineering and liberal arts and sciences, to address the impact of today’s technologies and platforms, as well as develop trust-building technologies and monitoring systems. In addition, the initiative hopes to evaluate the abilities of humans and machines to tell stories that foster trust.
Migration Redefined: Arts, Diaspora and Entrepreneurship in the 21st Century – The faculty in the College of the Arts and others will come together in order to connect artists with experts in innovation, entrepreneurship, economics and more through a new Center for Diaspora Arts and Entrepreneurship.
A to Z of Early Childhood: Communicating the Science of Early Childhood Development and Learning to Those Who Need It Most from a Trusted Source – The Anita Zucker Center for Excellence in Early Childhood Studies will create partnerships with faculty and students and networks of leaders at different levels to develop a multifaceted communications hub to guide early childhood practice and policy.
Leading the Nation in Digital Literacy and Precision Learning – An iClassroom will enable education and engineering faculty to collaborate on new instructional technologies that provide precision, optimized learning experiences for learners of all ages, from early childhood through older adulthood.
Creating the Healthiest Generation: UF Health will connect basic discovery science with clinical and translational research to create studies across the human lifespan in order to combat the fact that today’s generation of American children may live a shorter life than their parents.
