FDU Launches Humanics Challenge
FDU President Michael Avaltroni, left, with Dr. Stephen Klasko at the Future of Health Summit.
November 12, 2025 — Fairleigh Dickinson University has launched a Humanics Innovation Challenge to integrate human and machine learning in healthcare, funded through a seed gift from digital health advocate Stephen K. Klasko, MD, MBA.
“Dr. Klasko and I share the urgency to build healthcare teams that optimize all the advances in artificial intelligence with the humans in the middle — our students, clinicians and patients,” said FDU President Michael Avaltroni.
Klasko’s $200,000 gift will help fund initiatives within FDU, including a Humanics Hub at FDU composed of a Healthcare Humanity Lab, a Culture-Tech Collision Studio, a Creative Disruption Incubator, and a Storytelling Data Lab. Inspired by his gift, others have joined the challenge, and the University has raised another $300,000 for this effort.
“In a world where machines can process information faster than humans, our competitive advantage lies in our ability to connect, create and care. This fund invests in that fundamentally human future,” Klasko said.
Avaltroni said humanics is particularly critical to healthcare and a major focus for the institution. “Humanics will become an interdisciplinary academic thread woven through programs at FDU,” he said. “Through humanics, we’re working to ensure our students graduate with both the technical mastery to use the tools of modern medicine and the human capacity to see, hear, and care for the person in front of them. The future of healthcare will be shaped by our ability to be focused on innovation, but grounded in human connection.”
Avaltroni added that the five pillars of humanics include empathy, agility, cultural competence, creativity and critical thinking. The university of the future, he said, “must redefine higher education around a new and necessary purpose: to educate for capability, connection and human-centered design.”
Klasko’s passion is to bridge academic health centers with the emerging world of digital medicine and innovation. He currently serves as executive-in-residence at General Catalyst (a leading investor in digital healthcare) and is board chair of Teleflex and DocGo. “In this country, we have clinicians who are brilliant, caring and innovative, but they are stuck in a system that is confusing, inequitable, and often infuriating. It’s time to focus on the health of people as people, not patients, and to use the tools of technology to make preventive, personalized care that meets people wherever they are,” he said. “That’s going to require collaboration, communication, equity and ethics.”
Avaltroni and Klasko discussed the humanics challenge at the November annual summit of the Future of Health, gaining interest from leaders of major academic health systems, as well as entrepreneurs developing personalized digital health tools.
“We need tech and health to talk to each other,” President Avaltroni said. “We also need universities to teach and mentor the leaders of the future by building the hubs we’re creating. This can be an exciting future for healthcare, if we commit ourselves to it.”
To learn more and to join the Humanics Innovation Challenge, visit the fund’s website.
Fairleigh Dickinson University is a globally recognized private institution of higher education committed to academic excellence, innovation and professional preparation. With campuses in New Jersey and beyond, FDU offers a wide array of programs that prepare students to excel in their fields while making meaningful contributions to society. The University’s division of FDU Health was recently created to expand its health science and health-related programs. This year, FDU HealthPath Forward was introduced to build a coalition of partnerships to help develop healthcare-related programs, enhance workforce training, foster innovation in the sector and position the campuses as hubs for lifelong learning, health and wellbeing.