Come learn directly from the AI4RA team!
Want to learn more about how to incorporate AI safely and effectively into your sponsored programs office? Learn directly from AI4RA team members at the upcoming 2026 AI Symposium and Annual Meeting hosted by the National Council of University Research Administrators. We’d love to see you there!
MindRouter is an AI gateway developed by Luke Sheneman at the University of Idaho’s Research Computing and Data Services (RCDS). It is freely available for you to install and use under an open-source software license. It sits as a middle layer between tools like Vandalizer and the AI models that power them, routing requests across a cluster of GPU servers and providing a single, reliable access point for running large language models on university-controlled infrastructure.
his piece tackles a problem that’s becoming more relevant as AI tools spread into everyday work: how do you check the quality of something an AI produced, when there’s no answer key to grade against?
The Prior Approval Requirements Tracking Workflow reads through agreement documents and produces a comprehensive Prior Approval reference document. It extracts information on activities that require sponsoring agency authorization, including budget-related approvals, scope and timeline changes, and administrative approvals.
Vandalizer 4.8 has just released: Here are the major changes Your Knowledge Bases Are More Reliable PDFs now upload and process correctly every time — no more silent failures. Answers also come with clickable citations so you can see exactly where they came from. And if a question isn’t covered by your documents, the assistant…
The Effort Reporting Compliance workflow analyzes federal award documents and produces a structured Effort Compliance Brief.
Vandalizer v4.5.0 Released
July 9, 2026
11am PDT
Technical questions for Vandalizer
The FFR Management Extraction workflow is an AI-powered tool in Vandalizer that analyzes federal award documents and extracts everything you need to manage your Federal Financial Report (FFR/SF-425) obligations. This workflow processes federal award documents, such as award notices, cooperative agreements, or award terms and conditions, and it produces a structured, markdown-formatted reference
Research administration is risk-averse on purpose. The work navigates federal regulations, sponsor-specific terms, institutional policies, and audit trails that survive personnel changes by years. RAs have been trained well, and the training has stuck: when in doubt, slow down; when the rule is unclear, ask; when the answer is unverifiable, do not submit. That posture is not a deficit to be retrained. It is an asset the institution already has, and it should be respected as such.