The Microsoft AI Economy Institute Cohort 4 for Global Researchers ($75,000 Research Grants)

Application Deadline: November 30, 2026

Applications at the moment are open for the 2026 Microsoft AI Economy Institute. Launched in 2025, Microsoft’s AI Economy Institute (AIEI) helps impartial, policy-relevant analysis on how synthetic intelligence is reshaping productiveness, labor markets, schooling programs, and financial alternative worldwide. AIEI advances rigorous scholarship that informs policymakers, educators, employers, and staff as societies adapt to the speedy diffusion of generative AI. The institute emphasizes scholarship that’s instantly translatable to coverage, decision-making, and funding.

Cohort 4: AIEI Senior Fellows

Cohort 4 is open to researchers affiliated with accredited universities or analysis establishments worldwide. Up to 2 Principal Investigators (PIs) are accepted per proposal, and PIs should maintain a PhD or equal terminal diploma (e.g., MD, JD, DrPH).

Cohort 4: Research focus

AI and Jobs: designing for augmented work

Microsoft AIEI invites proposals for its fourth international analysis name, centered on understanding the organizational selections that form the place AI enhances human work, the place it substitutes for human work, and the place it creates totally new types of financial exercise. These outcomes aren’t fastened properties of a mannequin; they emerge from selections about workflow design, staff construction, governance, incentives, accountability, and experience growth.

The AIEI Senior Fellows expertise

The Senior Fellows Program follows a structured, cohort‑based mostly mannequin designed to assist rigorous analysis, peer change, and public dissemination.

Senior Fellows will:

• Participate in bi‑weekly digital workshops with fellow researchers and topic‑matter specialists
• Engage in a multi‑day, in‑individual workshop with Microsoft subject material specialists and AIEI management
• Contribute a chapter to an edited commerce e-book on the AI economic system
• Submit a analysis manuscript to a excessive‑high quality, open‑entry tutorial journal

Eligibility

• Open to researchers affiliated with accredited universities or analysis establishments worldwide and PIs and co-PIs should maintain a PhD or equal terminal diploma (e.g., MD, JD, DrPH) on the time of application.
• Each proposal could embrace as much as two Principal Investigators (PIs), however just one award might be issued. Interdisciplinary groups are inspired, and all PIs should meet the eligibility necessities.

Award and assist

• Each chosen proposal will obtain a single analysis reward of $75,000.
• Each chosen proposal is eligible for one journey allowance to assist attendance on the in‑individual workshop:
  • $7,500 for awardees based mostly within the United States, Canada, or Mexico
  • $20,000 for all different awardees

Application parts

Applications include two components:

1. Applicant Biosketch (11-point font)
   • Personal assertion (≤300 phrases)
   • One web page skilled abstract
   • Up to 3 contributions to science
   • Current analysis assist and quotation metrics (H-index, whole variety of citations, and I-index)
2. Project Overview
   • Research query, strategies, and contribution
   • Policy relevance and applicability
   • Up to 3 goal journals

For More Information:

Visit the Official Webpage of the Microsoft AI Economy Institute