The Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) recently selected five projects to receive funding from its seed grant program for 2026–2027, aiming to support interdisciplinary research and generate preliminary results for larger externally funded projects. The 16 proposals submitted spanned the college’s three departments: Human-Centered Computing and Social Informatics, Informatics and Intelligent Systems, and Privacy and Cybersecurity Informatics. Carleen Maitland, associate dean for research and graduate affairs, noted that two projects involve collaborators from other colleges — the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, the College of the Liberal Arts and the College of Medicine — and two others involve faculty from different departments within the college. The funded projects include “Beyond English: Benchmarking Large-Language Model (LLM) Clinical Safety and Appropriateness for Multilingual Mental Health Support,” led by PI Saeed Abdullah; “Data Infrastructure and Identity Work in AI Companionship,” led by PI Dana Calacci; “LLM-Driven Semantic Oracles for Automated Detection and Repair of Software Logic Vulnerabilities,” led by PI Hong Hu; and “Risk Exposure and Harm Reduction in Children’s Online Gambling,” led by PI Xin.