Professor Nia Nixon Awarded Two Seed Grants From The Jacobs Foundation 

By Sofia Del Fine
October 16, 2025

Congratulations to Professor Nia Nixon, who has been awarded two new seed grants from the Jacobs Foundation to advance innovative research at the intersection of child development, education, and artificial intelligence.

As Principal Investigator on “Signals of Synergy: Investigating Child–AI Interaction in Collaborative Teams,” Professor Nixon will lead a study examining how children work with AI teammates to solve real-world moral and social dilemmas. By pairing physiological data (like heart rate) with team discourse analysis, the project aims to understand how AI shapes empathy, belonging, and inclusion in group learning.

Collaborators include Jennifer Meyer (University of Vienna) and Jeanine Grütter (LMU Munich), who bring expertise in learning technologies and developmental psychology.
In a second project, “Who’s Driving the Robot and Do You Want to Use It?: Exploring Student Agency and Trust in Collaborative Human-Robot-AI Teams,” Professor Nixon joins an international team as co-PI alongside Katie Winkle (Uppsala University) and Marcelo Worsley (Northwestern University). This study examines how different control structures—student versus system-driven—influence trust and agency when children collaborate with robots and AI systems.

Nia Nixon

Reflecting on her work, Professor Nixon shared: “We’re not just studying how kids use AI—we’re exploring how AI can support deeper human connection, collaboration, and care in learning spaces.”

These projects reflect the School of Education’s growing leadership in research that blends technology, empathy, and innovation to reimagine the future of learning.