A recently received LIFT2 grant will provide geography and anthropology professor David Sathiaraj the funds to begin developing a software able to project who a political campaigns’ likely supporters are based on voter records.
In its third round, the LIFT2 Grant Program funded 15 proof-of-concept projects including Sathiaraj’s political algorithm, a foam-synthetic bone graft and a nitrogen fertilizer prescription.
Using his research background, Sathiaraj analyzes big data such as political information and puts that information to use, which is how he developed the idea for his LIFT2 proposal.
“I felt that to get accurate perceptions of the electorate, one will need individualized, campaign-specific or issue-specific predictions,” Sathiaraj said. “The idea goes further by not just providing individualized predictions but integrates these into software components that can help campaigns dissect large big data demographics into reachable targets for outreach.”
Arthur Cooper, LSU Research and Technology Foundation CEO, which oversees the grant program, said the budget for each round of proposals is about $500,000. This round’s projects were awarded more than $530,000.
Applications are accepted twice a year. The proposals come from faculty at campuses throughout the LSU System, including LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans and Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
The program has distributed more than $1.5 million among the 44 approved projects in the three rounds since its inception in July 2014.
“Every six months, we put out a request for a proposal to every LSU system, which defines the grant and acts [as] a rubric for how the projects are scored,” Cooper said. “After the proposals are submitted, they’re reviewed internally and externally, we score them and determine what can be funded.”
Once funding is approved, the finances go to the recipient’s campus’ Office of Sponsored Programs, where it is internally managed according to the budgets agreed upon by the proposer and the RTF.
Cooper said the goal of the grant is to get researchers thinking about the commercial reach of their projects.
The next step for Sathiaraj is to take his prototype software and invention closer to commercialization, he said.
“We’re just now getting the final reports from the first round and looking at them. [Each project] has made advancements in their research,” Cooper said. “One of the ways we can see them being successful is the amount of disclosures being made.”
Researchers file disclosures through their campus technology transfer office when they believe they have something to be patented. Since the inception of the grant, Cooper said he saw the number of disclosures from LSU researchers rise by about 50 percent.
As that number increases, the types of research grants being applied for continues to diversify, Cooper said.
“What strikes you is really the varied breath of the research we have here at LSU,” Cooper said. “We’re developing some very interesting technologies out there right now and all within the LSU campuses.”
With Sathiaraj’s grant proposal approved, he said he hopes to use the software to help political campaigns.
“It offers a granular, individualized voter perspective on candidates and resonating issues,” Sathiaraj said. “The invention, the associated visualizations and analytics software will provide campaigns actionable insights that they can act on, optimize and hopefully win.”