Aarushi Kalra, Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow, has been awarded a 2025 Global Empowerment Meeting (GEM) Incubation Fund grant by the Harvard Center for International Development (CID).
The GEM Incubation Fund supports early-stage, policy-relevant research that advances inclusive development, with the 2025 cohort focusing on the responsible use of artificial intelligence, addressing critical challenges in health, education, agriculture, climate adaptation, and crime. Aarushi was selected as part of a competitive international cohort of scholars whose projects aim to translate research into real-world impact.
Her project, AI and Crime: Evidence on Scammer Responses to AI-enabled Fraud Detection, examines how criminals adapt to AI-based fraud detection technologies. The research seeks to inform the design of more effective and equitable AI tools for crime prevention, particularly in under-regulated digital environments.
Aarushi is an applied microeconomist whose research focuses on the digital economy, AI, and social exclusion. This award recognises the originality and policy relevance of her work at the intersection of economics and emerging technologies.
The 2025 GEM Incubation Fund awardees include:
- Emily Breza (Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences) - Crop Insurance at Scale and Adaptation to Floods
- Sharad Goel (Harvard Kennedy School) - Harnessing Generative AI for Equitable, Scalable Teaching and Learning
- Emilia Gracia (Arizona State University) - TALI: Local-Language AI Tool to Close Learning Gaps in Public Schools
- Aarushi Kalra (University of Oxford) - AI and Crime: Evidence on Scammer Responses to AI-enabled Fraud Detection
- Nicholas Ryan (Yale University) - Incentivizing Sustainable Agriculture Using Satellite Technology.
- Duncan Webb (Nova School of Business and Economics) - Using AI to Improve Health Care in Rural India
The Department of Economics congratulates Aarushi on this achievement.
