Cliff Lampe earns Strategic Initiative Fund grant
Wednesday, 08/26/2026
Last Updated: Wednesday, 08/26/2026
By Noor HindiUniversity of Michigan School of Information professor Cliff Lampe has earned a Strategic Initiative Fund grant from U-M to support the Michigan Deepfake Resilience Hub, a cross-campus initiative focused on helping people identify and understand AI-generated media.
The project is one of 37 selected through the inaugural open call of U-M’s Strategic Initiative Fund, a $1 billion, 10-year investment intended to support ambitious ideas with the potential to create lasting impact at the university and beyond. Nearly 500 proposals were submitted from across U-M’s three campuses and Michigan Medicine, with $40 million in initial funding awarded to the first group of projects.
The Michigan Deepfake Resilience Hub brings together researchers from U-M Flint, U-M Dearborn and the Ann Arbor campus. The project combines deepfake detection technology, human-centered design and education to help citizens, educators and public institutions better recognize AI-generated content and protect themselves against AI-enabled misinformation and fraud.
Lampe says the work feels particularly urgent as generative AI makes manipulated content easier to produce and harder for people to evaluate.
“Good information has always been important,” Lampe says. “But it feels more urgent right now because we are living in an increasingly polarized country, where people aren’t just holding different opinions. They’re sometimes holding different views about reality, what is factual and not factual, and what is true and not true.
“AI is not responsible for that polarization, but it can certainly act as gasoline. It can help fuel it.”
Lampe will contribute expertise in user experience and AI literacy, helping the team develop tools that are useful and understandable for everyday users while also exploring the social skills people need to challenge false or manipulated information.
The project is led by Khalid Mahmoud Malik, professor of computer science and cybersecurity at U-M Flint, alongside Hafiz Malik, professor of electrical and computer engineering at U-M Dearborn; Rada Mihalcea, the Janice M. Jenkins Collegiate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering in the College of Engineering; and Lampe.
The Resilience Hub will include a portal for public verification, training for 1,500 people to monitor digital integrity and a deepfake response playbook so the efforts can be replicated.
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Learn more about Cliff Lampe’s research by visiting his UMSI faculty profile.
Learn more about the inaugural Strategic Initiative Fund award recipients in The University Record.
