Nora McDonald, Assistant Professor, Information Sciences and Technology, College of Engineering and Computing (CEC), received a National Science Foundation CAREER award for her project, “CAREER: Resilience in the Age of AI: Helping Adolescents Manage Generative AI and Personalization.”
Her research examines how adolescents navigate increasingly AI-driven and personalized online environments, how these systems shape their attention and decision-making, and how reclaiming attention can help restore agency and autonomy. Her work advances the “Resilience Framework”, a sociotechnical model that explains how young people can remain self-directed in environments increasingly designed to influence what they see, think about, and do.
Through interviews, surveys, and collaborative design with adolescents, McDonald and her research team will investigate how AI-driven personalized technologies shape young people’s decision-making, attention, and sense of self. The project will develop practical tools, educational resources, curricula, and community programs to help adolescents and the adults who support them better respond to algorithmic influence, with the goal of making them more resilient in an increasingly AI-mediated world. Across the project, McDonald will generate new theory, validated measurement instruments, and design tools that inform technologies and educational interventions supporting youth development in algorithmically mediated environments.
McDonald will receive $748,258 from NSF for this research. Funding began in June 2026 and will end in late May 2031.
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