A joint delegation from Gallaudet University and the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) traveled to the Colorado School of Mines on March 23–24, 2026, to represent their Universal AI Graduate Research Traineeship Program at the National Science Foundation’s NRT Annual Meeting, joining principal investigators, co-PIs, project coordinators, evaluators, and graduate trainees from NSF Research Traineeship projects across the country.
Representing Gallaudet, the lead institution on the $4.77 million NSF-funded Universal AI program, were Dr. Raja Kushalnagar, the program’s principal investigator and professor in Gallaudet’s School of Science, Technology, Accessibility, Mathematics, and Public Health (STAMP); Charmaine Mendonsa, project coordinator for Universal AI at Gallaudet; NRT trainee Joe Merino; and Jonah Winninghoff, data analyst on the project. Representing RIT, the program’s non-lead partner institution, were Dr. Cecilia Alm, co-principal investigator, Angelique Armstrong, project coordinator for Universal AI at RIT, and PhD student Cedric Bone. The combined team made the trip to the foothills of the Rockies for two days of programming designed to share best practices in interdisciplinary graduate education and strengthen networks across the NRT community.
A national gathering at the foot of the Rockies
The 2026 NRT Annual Meeting, hosted by the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, convened the NSF Research Traineeship community to share ideas across active projects, build networks of researchers and practitioners, promote graduate student development, and amplify the educational and scholarly impact of NRT-funded work. The meeting was organized by a committee at Mines led by Principal Investigator Lincoln D. Carr, with co-PIs Geoff Brennecka, Zhexuan Gong, and Meenakshi Singh, Postdoctoral Researcher Shehreen Aslam, and Project Coordinator Kate Bachman.
For the Gallaudet and RIT delegates, the meeting offered a platform to present the distinctive contributions of a program uniquely positioned at the intersection of artificial intelligence and accessibility.
The Universal AI program
Launched with NSF funding announced in 2025, Gallaudet’s Universal AI program is formally the NSF Research Traineeship Institutional Partnership Pilot (NRT-IPP): Universal AI. It is a five-year initiative led by Gallaudet University in partnership with the Rochester Institute of Technology. The award represents one of the largest training grants in Gallaudet’s history. It will provide full tuition, annual stipends of $37,000, and health benefits for 25 graduate trainees over the life of the program, and will offer training opportunities to an additional 75 graduate students between 2025 and 2030.
The program was among the first to be funded under NSF’s new Institutional Partnership Pilot track, which supports graduate training projects that pair non-R1 institutions with established NRT programs and industry partners. The Gallaudet–RIT pairing is a natural fit: the faculty of RIT’s AWARE-AI NRT program, directed by Alm as its PI, have already trained more than 60 doctoral and master’s students across four cohorts and serves as the model for the Universal AI curriculum. Under the partnership, Gallaudet master’s students and RIT doctoral students will interact through summer lab rotations at RIT, broadening research horizons and seeding cross-institutional collaborations. Industry collaborators on the program include Apple, Microsoft, IBM, and AppTek.
“The Universal-AI NSF Traineeship Program aims to create a well-prepared workforce that pushes the frontiers of AI while advocating for universality, accountability, and accessibility,” Kushalnagar has said of the program’s mission. Its curriculum spans AI software and algorithms, human-computer interaction with particular emphasis on sign language technologies, accessible human-computer interaction, and human-centered design for users across the full range of sensory abilities.
Why the meeting matters
For a program still in its early years, national convenings like the one at Mines offer a critical opportunity to learn from more established NRT projects, compare notes on trainee recruitment and curriculum design, and position Gallaudet’s work within the broader STEM graduate education landscape. With NSF’s push to expand NRT’s reach — the 2025 cohort of 15 new awards extended the program to graduate students in 47 states, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands — the annual meeting also serves as a venue for alignment on shared workforce priorities, including the preparation of AI researchers who design systems that work for everyone.
For Kushalnagar, Mendonsa, Merino, Winninghoff, Alm, Armstrong, and Bone the two days in Golden were both an opportunity to showcase what makes the Universal AI program distinctive and a chance to bring lessons from peer NRT projects back to their home campuses in Washington and Rochester.
For more information about the Universal AI program at Gallaudet University, visit the program’s website or contact Click to reveal email. Details on the 2026 NRT Annual Meeting are available here.
