The Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University–New Brunswick is pleased to announce its participation in Service to Service, a national initiative led by the Volcker Alliance and We the Veterans and Military Families. The program connects veterans and military families with public service education pathways, helping them transition into impactful careers in public leadership.
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MPI Grad Students Present MOMCare with AI
This paper presents MOMCare, a chatbot designed to support mothers navigating the challenges of PPD. MOMCare has a retrieval-augmented architecture with an end-to-end pipeline from data preprocessing to response generation. It employs hybrid classification, a dual embedding system, a dual verification guardrail, and a medical domain-specific reranking mechanism to generate empathetic and relevant PPD responses.
Samuel Researches Gambling Harm Reduction in Online Spaces
Our exploratory analyses suggest that this reddit forum provides important information on how users communicate motivations to gamble, interpretations of gambling experiences, and define potential harms related to gambling online as well as how to avoid or remedy those harms.
RAISE-25 Recap – Our Future With AI: Utopian or Dystopian?
Hosted by the Master of Public Informatics (MPI) program, the final round of the second annual RAISE-25 Informatics – Data Science competition was held Friday, April 11, 2025, at the Bloustein School. The competition challenge focused on “Our Future With AI: Utopian or Dystopian?”
RAISE-24 Recap: Does News Media Spread Fear of AI?
The final round for the RAISE-24 Informatics – Data Science competition was held Friday, April 19, 2024 at the Bloustein School. Hosted by the Master of Public Informatics (MPI) program, the inaugural competition challenge asked competitors “Does News Media Spread Fear of AI?”
Research by Jim Samuel et al. “Customized AI Readers: An Adaptive Framework for Flexible Human Handwriting Recognition of Numerical Digits with OCR Methods”
This study develops an index dubbed the pandemic vulnerability index at city level (PVI-CI) for classifying the pandemic vulnerability levels of cities, grouping them into five vulnerability classes, from very high to very low. It provides critical wisdom needed for urban healthcare policy and resource management.
Prof. Jim Samuel Speaks with Dr. William Latimer on Public Health America about Informatics, ChatGPT, and His Educational Journey.
Prof. Jim Samuel was a guest on Public Health America where he gives a summary on his AI research and outlines his academic journey from Architecture to Public Informatics.
EJB Talks: Public Informatics Spotlight–from Data Analytics to Artificial Intelligence Impacts
Public Informatics Program director Jim Samuel talks about his path to studying the Big Data phenomenon, the future of informatics and artificial intelligence, and what the arrival of Chat GPT means for society.
EJB Talks Alumni Spotlight: Making a Difference at Microsoft
For this EJBTalks episode, Simon Liepold MPAP ’05 talks to Stuart Shapiro about his role at Microsoft, describing his efforts in implementing important global topics such as sustainability, privacy, and cybersecurity.
New Jersey State Policy Lab: Using Creative Informatics and Artificial Intelligence to Address the Drug Addiction Crisis in New Jersey
New Jersey has a persistent substance addiction problem which must be viewed in the context of laws, policies, and initiatives implemented to address it.