Theja Tulabandhula Receives 2026 Chancellor’s Translational Research Initiative Fund Award
About Theja's project
The Office of Technology Management has selected Theja Tulabandhula, associate professor in the Department of Information and Decision Sciences, as a recipient of the 2026 Chancellor’s Translational Research Initiative (CTRI) Fund. The competitive program provides up to $25,000 to help move promising university innovations toward commercialization.
Tulabandhula’s project, “Trust-Layer Optimization for Policy-Aligned Enterprise AI,” focuses on improving the reliability of generative AI systems used in customer service, compliance and other enterprise applications. As organizations increasingly rely on large language models, inaccurate or policy-violating responses can create financial, legal and reputational risks.
Generative AI is creating tremendous opportunities for organizations, but trust remains one of the biggest barriers to adoption. Our goal is to develop technology that helps enterprises deploy AI systems that are more reliable, policy-compliant, and ready for real-world use. — Theja Tulabandhula
The project will develop a model-agnostic trust layer that works with existing AI models to improve factual correctness and adherence to organizational policies before responses reach end users. Rather than requiring companies to retrain their AI models, the technology is designed as middleware that integrates with existing enterprise AI systems, making deployment practical across a wide range of industries.
Supported by the CTRI award, the research team will build a prototype and evaluate its performance on representative enterprise workflows. The long-term goal is to translate this research into licensing opportunities, startup formation and broader adoption of trustworthy AI technologies by organizations operating in regulated and high-stakes environments.