2026 Seed Grants, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI

Call for Proposals

The Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence is committed to promoting human-centered uses of AI and data science, designing systems with these technologies using human-centered methods, and ensuring the benefits of these technologies are broadly shared across humanity. We seek proposals that support novel, ambitious, and speculative ideas  in human-centered AI aimed at generating initial results. 

We welcome proposals from the full array of humanistic, social scientific, natural scientific, biomedical, and engineering approaches, including critical, historical, ethnographic, clinical, experimental, and inventive work — from discrete studies and research for book publications to speaker series, system building, and evaluation. This year, we especially aim to fund proposals focused on the domains of AI and data science for discovery, the transformation of education and learning, studying and shaping the societal impact of AI, and the spiritual dimensions of this society-shaping technology.

We encourage collaborations between researchers whose work bridges two or more disciplines, as well as proposals that can make a persuasive case that initial results will catalyze further support from internal and external stakeholders.

We expect to award approximately 25 grants, up to $75,000 each for a one-year period. 

Priority Areas

In addition to the above criteria, preference will be given to high-impact projects that align with the three broad HAI principles:

• Intelligence — research that aims to develop novel technologies inspired by the depth and versatility of human intelligence. Potential topics may include AI inspired by neuroscience, cognitive science, and psychology; novel unsupervised, semi-supervised, self-supervised, and supervised learning methods for diverse data types; knowledge and semantics; AI and data science to understand human intelligence.
• Augment Human Capabilities — research that aims to design and create AI and data science technologies that augment humans rather than replace them. Potential topics/domains may include AI and human-computer interaction; health, medicine, and wellness; robotics and automation; sustainability and climate change; education, law.
• Human Impact — research that aims to understand and guide the global societal impact of AI technologies for the greater good. Potential topics may include the impact of AI on economics, society, government, law, ethics, philosophy, policy, science, and other related areas of the social sciences and humanities. This may include race, ethnicity, and gender studies; interpretable, trustworthy, and fair AI; the intellectual and conceptual foundations of AI, its history, and its cultural impact.

Submission Guidelines

Proposals are due on August 18, 2026 at 10:00am PT. Proposals will undergo a scientific review and an ethics and society review. Award recipients will be notified in November. Please submit using the Apply button on this webpage. 

The proposal (no longer than 3 pages, excluding references, PDF, single-spaced, 11 point, 1 inch margins) should include the following components:

First two pages:

• Project Title
• Background and problem statement
  • Core research idea
  • How your research idea innovates over existing methods/applications or brings together diverse disciplines
• Detailed technical (or general) problem solving approach. HAI has developed a framework on how to conduct human-centered AI research. One way we think about it is here. In what ways, if any, does your approach relate to this framework?
• Team involved (Stanford faculty, postdocs, staff, and/or students; include names and titles when known)
• Requested funding and associated sketch budget (e.g., “25% RA 2qtrs: $18K; fieldwork travel $3K, conference dissemination: $4K, 8% infrastructure charge). Finalists will be asked to submit a detailed budget at a later date.
  • Proposals may request up to $75,000 for a 12‑month period. An 8% infrastructure charge is applied to direct costs; on a $75,000 award, this results in $69,444 available for direct costs and $5,556 for the infrastructure charge.
  • Funds may not support general staff or administrative support, external consultants, contractors, or subawards except in very limited circumstances by special permission in advance.

Third page:

• Ethics and Society Review (ESR) statement: (one page PDF, single-spaced, 11 point, 1 inch margins). The ESR process aims to create space for project teams to stop and think about the potential ethical dilemmas and societal challenges that could follow from their work. As part of the ESR process, our panel may ask for more detail in response. Please utilize the ESR Statement Instructions for details about:
  • what goes into an ESR statement
  • ESR statement template
  • how the process works
  • and more 

Fourth page +: 

• References (no max or min limits, at the end of the PDF file)
   

Selection Criteria:

HAI will review proposals based on:

• Likelihood to make a positive impact on our planet, our nations, our communities, our families and/or our lives
• Novelty or innovation in the application, development or study of AI and data science 
• Demonstrated credentials and capacity of the proposed team to complete the project 
• Integration of multiple disciplines 
• Intellectual merit, quality, and creativity of the proposal 
• Alignment with the Priority Areas and Domains listed above
• Recommendations from the ethics and society review