The Microsoft AI Economy Institute (AIEI) has announced its second global research call, inviting proposals from scholars worldwide to explore how generative AI (GenAI) is reshaping work, education, and opportunity. With GenAI on track to become the most widely adopted technology in history, the institute asks a defining question: will its benefits be broadly shared, or constrained by technical, institutional, and cultural barriers?
Research Priorities
The AIEI was created to ensure AI adoption is both inclusive and guided by rigorous scholarship. This year’s call seeks research that examines how GenAI is transforming productivity, labor markets, and workforce development. Projects are encouraged to provide actionable insights for policymakers, educators, employers, and workers.
Four themes anchor the 2025 call:
- Entry-level jobs: How AI is changing pathways into the labor market, the role of training and apprenticeships, and the impact on credentialing and career progression.
- K–12 education: How AI might alter teaching tasks, improve retention, reshape classroom dynamics, and raise new ethical concerns.
- Community and vocational colleges: The opportunities these institutions have to prepare students for AI-enabled industries and diffuse AI fluency across the workforce.
- National adoption strategies: Why some countries are advancing faster than others, and how policy frameworks, skills, and demographics shape diffusion.
Deliverables and Recognition
Selected researchers will participate in biweekly virtual convenings from November 2025 to March 2026, contribute to an in-person workshop at Microsoft in April 2026, and submit both a book chapter (May 2026) and a peer-reviewed journal article (June 2026). They will also present findings at a policy convening in June 2026.
Awardees will be named senior fellows of the AIEI, with opportunities to extend collaboration into consulting, commissioned studies, lectures, and industry engagement.
Eligibility and Funding
The program is open to researchers worldwide who are affiliated with accredited universities or research institutions. Each principal investigator will receive $75,000 in funding, plus a travel allowance—$7,500 for awardees in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, and $20,000 for those elsewhere.
Timeline and Evaluation
- Proposal deadline: September 29, 2025
- Awards announced: October 27, 2025
- Research period: November 2025 – June 2026
Proposals will be evaluated on originality, policy and scholarly impact, methodological rigor, and their alignment with AIEI’s mission of advancing equitable participation in the AI economy.
