Professor Jiayi Young teaches a range of Design courses, including DES 111: Coding for Designers, DES 149: Information Design, and DES 158: Data and Large-Scale Installations. “I work in critical design, using data-driven interfaces and public interventions to examine how rapid technological change reshapes society,” she shared. Her practice centers on large-scale installations that transform data into immersive environments, creating tools and methodologies to explore the social, cultural, and political dimensions of technology. These works address themes such as democracy and information, race and AI, and shelter and resilience.

Young’s work is deeply collaborative and international, engaging partners in France, the United Kingdom, Taiwan, and beyond. Through these partnerships, she examines how technologies such as social media and artificial intelligence are shaped by—and in turn shape—diverse cultural, social, and political contexts, while cultivating cross-cultural frameworks that expand and challenge the scope of her projects.

Innovation Supported by a Seed

One of the grants that has supported Young’s international collaborations is the UC Davis Seed Grants for International Activities. Partnering with UC Davis colleges and schools, the Office of Research and the Office of Inclusive Excellence, Global Affairs provides Seed Grants to faculty pursuing innovative research, service, and engagement projects around the world. Seed Grant projects foster long-term international research collaborations, create innovations in internationalizing the curriculum in support of the Global Education for All initiative, and grow or build global partnerships. Since 2001, the program has supported over 290 diverse projects, resulting in significant international partnerships, research outcomes, and more than $50 million in external funding.

Young’s trajectory of international collaboration began with a Seed Grant in 2017–2018. Partnering with the Chaire Arts et Sciences of the École Polytechnique and the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, France, they co-launched Useful Fictions, an experimental platform designed to bring artists and scientists together for creative experimentation with shared inquiries into ecological and societal concerns. The outcomes were expansive: in 2019 the project culminated in a week-long symposium at École Polytechnique, engaging 24 researchers, 6 invited speakers, and 18 graduate fellows from five continents.

The collaboration also produced public-engaged scholarship, including the Speed of Light Expedition on the streets of Montmartre and a presentation at the historic George C. Marshall Center in Paris, hosted by the U.S. Embassy in France. Additional outcomes included three exhibitions, a panel at the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA), and a peer-reviewed paper in a French arts-and-sciences journal. The project even opened unexpected opportunities for Young to contribute to international collaborations, such as at the University of Cambridge and the Centre Pompidou.

“The initiative wasn’t just about science or technology; it was about who gets to shape the future and how,” Young emphasized.

 The project continues today in new renditions and positions UC Davis as a catalyst for globally networked, cross-disciplinary experimentation.

Building on this foundation, Young secured further recognition and resources. The momentum of Useful Fictions helped her garner the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) award (2022–2024) for “China Shop: Conversations between Artists and Scientists.” This two-year project paired artists and scientists in ten-week residencies at UC Davis, culminating in public forums and presentations at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. The NEA project highlighted her ability to convene creative teams that transcend disciplinary silos and spark new conversations around art, science, and social imagination.

Evolution Toward Taiwan

These outcomes created the conditions for Young’s most recent Global Affairs award: the UC Davis–Taiwan Collaborative Research Fund in Memory of Larry Vanderhoef (2025–2027), co-PIed with Hung-chiung Li of National Taiwan University. The project, AI for ALL: Cross-disciplinary Partnerships in Arts, Humanities, and Engineering, is a major international initiative across Asia that brings together artists, humanists, and AI engineers. It is grounded in the growing urgency to rethink artificial intelligence (AI) through humanistic, artistic, and culturally situated perspectives, with particular emphasis on people, culture, and language.

AI for ALL is coordinated by the Asia Theories Network (ATN) and connected institutions across Asia and the United States, including NTU, Taipei National University of the Arts, the Digital Art Foundation, the National Center for High-Performance Computing, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Irvine, Tokyo University of the Arts, Kyung Hee University, and the National Gallery Singapore. With Taiwan as a central hub, the project has convened leadership from across Asia and the U.S. to define five themes—from the counterhistories of AI to planetary ecologies and embodied machines—that will guide workshops, collaborative prototyping, symposia, and exhibitions.

A significant milestone was reached with the July 2025 Taiwan Collaboratory at Taipei National University of the Arts’ Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, which brought together artists, engineers, humanists, and students in Taiwan to exchange ideas and co-develop working modalities for pursuing shared inquiries into AI within Taiwan’s distinctive cultural and technological contexts.

Advancing Global Education

Alongside faculty collaborations, AI for ALL is cultivating the next generation of cross-disciplinary thinkers through an international student program. The student group currently includes participants from UC Davis Design, NTU’s Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, and National Tsing Hua University’s Department of Taiwan Literature, with additional students from partner institutions expected to join during a November 2025 workshop.

The group has begun organizing reading circles and workshops, providing both foundational training in AI and opportunities for students to build familiarity with one another. These activities strengthen shared knowledge, foster creative exchange, and expand participation across disciplines. In the months ahead, the student group will continue to grow, comprising students from UC Davis and institutions across Asia, with the goal of expanding the educational impact of AI for ALL to extend beyond research and exhibitions to create a sustainable platform for cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary learning.

In her classrooms at UC Davis, Young integrates global perspectives into her courses, teaching students the importance of information design, working with data in design, applying pluralistic design frameworks, and collaborating with international partners. Students gain hands-on experience through workshops, public events, and cross-border collaborations. “Global education fosters empathy and critical thinking. It challenges us to move beyond disciplinary silos and reimagine our shared future,” she reflected.

Looking Forward

From Useful Fictions in France to The China Shop in the U.S. to AI for ALL in Taiwan, Young’s work charts a clear trajectory: small seed grants leading to major awards, deepening networks, and ever more ambitious cross-cultural projects. These initiatives exemplify how creative risk-taking, supported by programs like UC Davis Global Affairs, can generate lasting, multi-institutional collaborations that advance more democratic and pluralistic approaches to understanding technology’s impact on society.