The BFI Gracias Center for Human Sciences and Well-Being is pleased to announce two new Gracias Incubator awards, totaling $1.6 million in funding. These grants will support rigorous, interdisciplinary research on the beliefs, behaviors, and technologies that shape human development.
The Gracias Incubator was designed to seed bold, collaborative research at the intersection of social science and human well-being. These awards reflect that vision, spanning healthcare communication, education, and AI, and bringing together economists, clinicians, and practitioners from the University of Chicago and partner institutions around the world.
CLARITY: A Belief-Informed AI Video Tool to Strengthen Trust in Healthcare
Trust in the U.S. healthcare system has declined steadily for decades, and clinicians face mounting time constraints that limit their ability to have the kinds of conversations that rebuild it. CLARITY, Clinician-Led AI Resources Individualized To You, is designed to address this gap.
The tool will convert clinician-verified medical information from post-visit notes into brief, personalized videos tailored to each patient’s diagnosis, language, literacy level, and cultural context. Across a series of experiments and pragmatic trials in oncology and pediatric surgery at the University of Chicago Medicine, the team will test how the provision of these videos, as well as features like speaker accent, message framing, and the communication of uncertainty, influence patient understanding, trust, and adherence.
The project integrates behavioral science, clinical expertise, and responsible AI design to establish an evidence-based pathway for using generative AI to complement the patient-clinician relationship.
Project leads: Emma Levine (Professor of Behavioral Science, University of Chicago Booth School of Business), Marina Chiara Garassino (Professor of Medicine and Director of Thoracic Oncology, UChicago Medicine), Baddr Shakhsheer (Associate Professor of Surgery, UChicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital), and Pietro Veronesi (Sherman and Vivian Chao Distinguished Service Professor of Finance, Booth School of Business).
Shaping Beliefs Around AI to Guide Constructive Usage and Integration into Tutoring at Scale
High-dosage tutoring is among the most effective tools for closing achievement gaps, yet a critical barrier remains: students and parents often hold beliefs about AI that lead to disengagement or over-reliance, undermining the potential for genuine learning gains.
This project, led by Leonardo Bursztyn in partnership with The Reading Institute, University Tutoring Collaborative, Iowa Department of Education and CUNY Reading Fellows, will study how to shape beliefs about AI in ways that promote constructive use. Working with an expected sample of 5,000 K–10 students across multiple school districts, the team will first measure how students and parents understand AI tutoring tools, then design and test behavioral interventions to shift those beliefs. A randomized controlled trial will compare human tutoring alone, AI alone, and human tutoring combined with AI, with primary outcomes including beliefs, engagement, and standardized reading scores.
Project leads: Leonardo Bursztyn (Saieh Family Professor of Economics, University of Chicago), Katie Pace Miles (Associate Professor, Brooklyn College, City University of New York), Sally Sadoff (Professor of Economics and Strategy, Rady School of Management, UC San Diego), and Laura Harrison (Director of Neuroscience, Valor Equity Partners).
About the Gracias Center for Human Sciences and Well-Being
The BFI Gracias Center for Human Sciences and Well-Being supports rigorous, interdisciplinary research on the foundations of human flourishing. Drawing on the methods and insights of economics, psychology, medicine, and the social sciences, the Center funds work that deepens our understanding of the forces — biological, behavioral, social, and technological — that shape well-being across the lifespan. The Gracias Incubator is the Center’s flagship funding mechanism for early-stage, high-potential research.
For more information, visit bfi.uchicago.edu/gracias-center