Assistant professor Bonhak Koo (Hospitality) and his coauthors received the Best Paper Award at the GLOTECH 2026 Conference for their paper, “Hospitality’s Empathic Friend: How an Emotional Support AI Chatbot Can Be Used for Early Detection and Intervention for Employees’ Psychological Distress.”

This interdisciplinary research was conducted in collaboration with colleagues from the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV (Soon Cho, Ph.D.) and the School of Counseling Psychology and Social Welfare at Handong Global University in South Korea (Uibin Lee, Ph.D.).

In this study, the researchers developed a fine-tuned AI chatbot and assessed its effects on employees’ mental health. Their findings suggest that AI chatbot interventions may promote adaptive coping not only by alleviating immediate negative emotions but also by enhancing emotional clarity. This greater clarity may help hospitality employees cognitively reframe stressful workplace experiences, particularly those with higher levels of workplace attachment anxiety.