Rice Sociologist Wins Stanford Fellowship to Study Health, Inequality and AI
Corey Abramson, an associate professor of sociology at Rice University, has been selected for a year-long residential fellowship at Stanford University's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Abramson will spend the 2026-27 academic year completing a book and refining machine learning methods for social science research.
His work sits at an unusual intersection. Abramson combines two decades of fieldwork in cancer clinics, dementia care facilities, hospitals and urban neighborhoods with computational analysis to examine how health outcomes and American society shape one another.
During the fellowship, Abramson will finish "Unequal Anatomies," a book for Oxford University Press that draws on interviews, quantitative data and qualitative research to show how health and life chances compound throughout a person's lifetime.
Integrating AI Into Qualitative Research
A second focus involves developing AI and machine learning methods for health research. Abramson's group began building these approaches before generative AI became widely available, positioning the work ahead of broader conversations about responsible AI use in social science.
"My research examines how health and American society are deeply interconnected, combining large-scale computational analysis with in-depth field observation and using each to check and extend the other," Abramson said.
At Rice, Abramson co-directs the Center for Computational Insights on Inequality and Society and leads the Computational Ethnography Lab, where students work across qualitative research, computation and public policy. The fellowship will expand opportunities for student collaborators to carry research participants' experiences into policy conversations.
First Rice Fellow in Modern Era
Based on public fellowship records, Abramson is the first residential fellow selected while holding a faculty position at Rice since the program's modern era began in 2007.
The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences has shaped major scholarship in the social sciences for over 70 years. The fellowship brings together scholars across disciplines whose work has reshaped fields and informed national policy.
Abramson emphasized the value of working beyond his discipline. "One thing I've tried to do throughout my career is seek wide feedback beyond my discipline, from clinicians and computer scientists to patients and policymakers," he said.
For Houston, where questions of aging, dementia care and health inequality are increasingly urgent, the fellowship reflects continued momentum in research that connects computation with lived experience.
Learn more about AI for Science & Research and how computational methods are reshaping social science inquiry.
Your membership also unlocks:
