Thaler-Tversky Independent Research Grant

Deadline: April 1, 2025

The Roman Family Center for Decision Research is accepting submissions for our Independent Research Grant program for emerging scholars. This program is supported by the generosity of Roman Family Center for Decision Research former faculty director Richard Thaler in honor of Amos Tversky, and provides a limited number of small grants to support new behavioral science research led by University of Chicago PhD students and post-doctoral researchers.

The primary motivation for these grants is to support our emerging scholars in conducting new independent behavioral science research.
Proposals for research jointly pursued with a faculty member are not eligible for these awards, although we do hope that faculty will encourage our emerging scholars to pursue eligible research.
Applicants are permitted to have graduate student or post-doc collaborators.
Ideal applications will demonstrate conscientious, independent thought, and avenues to expand RF-CDR research efforts beyond the domains being explored in our faculty members’ labs.
We encourage new applicants who have not previously applied for this grant.
We will select three awardees to receive $2,500 each.
The funds need to be used within 18 months following the award date.

Each proposal will be reviewed by members of the RF-CDR’s Governing Board (Nicholas Epley, Ayelet Fishbach, Devin Pope, Alex Todorov, Bernd Wittenbrink). Award decisions, which will be sent via email, will be made in time to make funds available early in the following quarter.

The form below will ask you to address the following critical proposal elements:

A research question, in the context of existing literature
Hypothesis being tested
Proposed method
Budget outline

The deadline for this round of submissions is April 1, 2025. We will notify awardees in late May 2025.

If you have any questions, please contact RF-CDR Executive Director Amy Boonstra at: amy.boonstra@chicagobooth.edu.