May 19, 2026 at 12:00 PM ET
Building AI, Building Trust
An Agentic Research Administration Case Study
Join us for a candid case study webinar on what happens when an AI agent fails, what happens when one works, and why the team you build matters more than the tool you ship.
Event Details
š Date: 18th May 2026
š Time: 12pm Eastern
š Location: Online
What You Will Learn
A Real Pre-Award AI Agent, Broken Down: The prompt design, the outputs including proposal checklists, submission timelines, and draft routing emails, and the specific failure mode that ended it. Why Narrow Beats Ambitious: How a focused contract review agent succeeded where a broader pre-award assistant did not, and what that tells us about scoping AI in research administration. How to Run a Pilot That Surfaces Honest Feedback: The conditions that allow a pilot team to say a tool should be scrapped, and why that is the most valuable outcome you can get. AI as Assistant, Not Authority: A practical framework for distinguishing where AI supports expert judgment from where it tries to replace it. Trust as the Durable Asset: Why tools change and teams outlast them, and how to experiment with AI without losing confidence in yourself or your office.
Why Attend?
Hear an unfiltered first-hand account of building agentic AI tools inside a real research administration office. Take away a working framework for scoping AI projects that are likely to land with your team. Learn how to design pilots that protect team trust even when the technology disappoints.
Who Should Attend?
Research Development Professionals and Proposal Managers. Pre-Award, Post-Award, and Sponsored Programs Teams. Contract and Grant Review Specialists. Research Administrators, Directors, and Associate Vice Presidents for Research.
About Our Hosts
| Host | Background |
|---|---|
| Raphael Bernier | Head of Growth at Atom Grants; helps universities modernize research development with AI to reduce admin burden, increase faculty engagement, and improve proposal success. |
| Julie Swaringim-Griffin | Assistant Vice President, Central Sponsored Programs Administration at Oklahoma State University; research administrator and case study lead behind the agentic pre-award and contract review pilots discussed in this session. |
Reserve Your Spot
If your office is being asked to do something with AI and you want to do it without breaking trust with your faculty or your team, this case study will give you a tested lens for what to try, what to scope down, and what to walk away from.