As we wrap up the 2025-26 academic year, the fellows are (as usual!) reluctant to see their fellowship year end. The research seminars were enriching and generative, the fellows have built collaborations and challenged one another, many papers and projects were completed, and others were begun. In celebrating these and other accomplishments of the year, it is touching to hear fellows’ genuine gratitude and appreciation for one another and for CASBS expressed so exuberantly. Preparations are underway to welcome the 2026-27 fellows class, which will arrive in September.
During this year we have piloted some new programs with positive effect. I introduced the practitioner fellow program as a pilot for 2025-26 and, based on its success, this program will continue under incoming director Tino Cuéllar in 2026-27 (with three times more applicants compared with the first year). The four 2025-26 practitioners were active and valued members of the community, and I was thrilled to see the conversations that emerged between practitioners and academics that bridged basic social science to pressing problems facing the world.
In the fall, recall that we announced the CASBS Convenes! initiative, which seeks to leverage the Center’s renowned convening power (augmented by the addition of a new building in 2023). Our goal was to host a variety of activities including workshops, conferences, and events and attract a wider audience and set of leaders and participants for purposes of engaging with diverse topics and disciplines, applying knowledge of human behavior to pressing problems, and working toward producing new solutions to those problems. This goal has been realized through welcoming groups who worked on diverse topics including the relationship of public science funding to democracy, the potential psychological harms of relationships with chatbots, the formation and change of beliefs, and how to reconstitute federal data on international human rights and conflicts. We also presented two stellar public events this spring, including a panel on immigrant cities that also honored former CASBS associate director Bob Scott, as well as the Sage-CASBS Award Lecture, delivered by 2026 winner and three-time CASBS fellow Hazel Markus.
Knowing the enormous role CASBS summer institutes have played in the Center’s landscape and the impact they’ve made in building fields of inquiry, I was eager to introduce a new one. This spring, we announced the Institute on AI Methods for Social Scientists (AIMS), which will be held in July 2026. We were blown away by the level of interest in this program – more than 300 applications! In addition to the 22 participants, we will have close to 20 social scientists presenting cutting edge social science research in which AI is used as a methodological tool. I am excited to be co-leading this institute with Noshir Contractor, a 2025-26 CASBS fellow. We will feature several former CASBS fellows both as participants and presenters.
Although the summer can be quiet at CASBS, this one will be more active in part because of AIMS, but also because we will host two additional workshops and will renovate what used to be the volleyball court. Many generations of fellows have fond memories of playing volleyball but the court surface was badly damaged during the construction of the new building, This summer we will resurface and rehabilitate the court. In its new form it will accommodate multiple sports including basketball, pickle ball, volleyball, ping pong, and, in a nod to the 2024-25 class, four-square. Most exciting, we will welcome Tino Cuéllar as the new permanent director in July. He will walk into a thriving and vibrant center that is playing a critical role in advancing the social and behavioral sciences. I know that under his leadership CASBS will continue to flourish.
Serving as interim director has been an unexpected gift. I came to CASBS knowing its impact personally, both as a former fellow and a board member; I leave with something harder to articulate — a deep appreciation for what this place makes possible that no other institution quite replicates. I hand the reins to Tino Cuéllar with full confidence, and with genuine gratitude to the fellows, staff, and broader CASBS community who help make CASBS so magical.
