Tan receives ELEVATE Faculty Support Program Award – UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health

March 14, 2025
Xianming Tan,PhD, a professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the Gillings School, has been awarded $16,000 through the ELEVATE Faculty Support Program for the 2025-2026 academic year to support research in AI-assisted systematic reviews.
Dr. Xianming Tan
Designed to foster excellence in research, scholarship and innovation, ELEVATE provides recognition and support to enhance the impact of fixed-term faculty within the academic community. Faculty can allocate the funds based on their priorities — whether to advance their research or develop new approaches to teaching and learning.
ELEVATE awards are presented by the Office of Faculty Affairs, which provides recipients with the flexibility to choose between using the funds as a workload buyout or as research funds to catalyze innovative projects.
The funding, provided by the Office of the Provost, will aid in the refinement and evaluation of a semi-automated framework for systematic review abstract screening.
According to Tan, Systematic reviews play a crucial role in synthesizing research evidence, but the process of manually screening thousands of article abstracts can be time-intensive and laborious.
This project aims to alleviate that burden by integrating artificial intelligence tools and statistical methods into the screening process, improving efficiency while maintaining high accuracy.
With this funding, Tan plans to improve the AI-assisted workflow for systematic review screening, conduct real-world case studies to evaluate effectiveness, hire a graduate research assistant to support data management, coding and analysis, and secure necessary computational tools, including API access for large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini, to enhance scalability and reproducibility.
As the volume of scientific literature continues to grow, innovative solutions are needed to keep up with the demand for timely and accurate systematic reviews. By reducing the time and labor involved in screening abstracts, this research has the potential to benefit multiple disciplines, including health care, policy and academia.
The ultimate goal is to pave the way for a fully automated systematic review system, streamlining the research process and making evidence-based knowledge more accessible.
This recognition underscores the importance of AI in advancing research methodologies and highlights the institution’s commitment to supporting innovative academic projects.
See the full list of award recipients.
Contact the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health communications team at sphcomm@unc.edu.
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March 14, 2025
Xianming Tan has been awarded $16,000 to support research in AI-assisted systematic reviews.

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