Senior Program Scientist

Schmidt Sciences awards over $3m to study AI's impact on jobs. (C) Schmidt Sciences As part of its AI at Work program, Schmidt Sciences has awarded over $3 million to 19 real-world studies conducted by international labor economists about how AI is transforming jobs around the world, the organization announced today. The awardees will each receive up to $200,000 to study how emerging AI technology is affecting worker productivity, wages, employment and careers, with the goal of uncovering where AI can provide the greatest value to labor markets and the global economy, and where AI's impact will be felt most acutely. Schmidt Sciences is supporting both work underway and commissioning new studies. Over the next two years, awardees will conduct randomized controlled trials and similar field studies in job sites ranging from banks to factories to laboratories to the gig economy. The 19 researchers leading these efforts, selected from more than 300 applicants, represent a variety of career levels, from PhD candidates to professors, and hail from 16 institutions in eight countries. Their projects reflect this global scope, exploring how AI affects loan officers at East African banks, employees at Southeast Asian small businesses, workers in the Chilean government, job seekers in Sierra Leone and American drivers competing with autonomous taxis. AI at Work partnered with five leading economists to source, review, and select awardees. The review panel included MIT's David Autor and Nobel Laureates in Economics Daron Acemogluand Simon Johnson, University of Pennsylvania's Ioana Marinescu, University of Chicago's John List, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT (JPAL), and research institution UNU-WIDER. In addition to funding, Schmidt Sciences is providing awardees with connections to its grantee network, feedback on their projects and access to computing support. These projects will also inform ongoing work between The Rockefeller Foundation, Schmidt Sciences and other foundations on scenarios for AI's impact on the labor markets. Last October,The Rockefeller Foundation collaborated with Schmidt Sciences to gather economists, AI companies and civic leaders at the Bellagio Center in Italy to develop scenarios that will inform actions that governments and companies can take to maximize the opportunities for AI to benefit the common good. * Youn Baek, postdoctoral associate, NYU Stern School of Business * Johanna Barop, doctoral candidate, Oxford University * Daniel Björkegren, assistant professor, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs * Silvia Castro, postdoctoral researcher, INSEAD and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich * Richard Freund, Senior Research Associate, MIDE Development and Non-Resident Researcher, UN University World Institute for Development Economics Research * Paul Gertler, Li Ka Shing Professor of Economics, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business * Luca Henkel, assistant professor, Erasmus University Rotterdam * Mitchell Hoffman, Richard F. Aster Jr. Professor of Economics, UC Santa Barbara * Ben Hyman, economist and senior researcher, California Policy Lab, UCLA * Brian Jabarian, Howard & Nancy Marks Fellow (postdoctoral), University of Chicago Booth School of Business * Hyunjin Kim, assistant professor, INSEAD * Tim Köhler, research fellow, University of Cape Town and research associate, Stellenbosch University * Johanna Barop, doctoral candidate, Oxford UniversityJoseph Levine, doctoral candidate, Oxford University * Benjamin Manning, doctoral candidate, MIT Sloan School of Management * Kristina McElheran, associate professor, University of Toronto * Jiarui (Jerry) Qian, doctoral candidate, University of Virginia * Simon Quach, assistant professor, University of Southern California * Jorge Tamayo, assistant professor, Harvard Business School * Nety Wu, doctoral candidate, INSEAD The AI at Work program plans to issue additional calls for proposals in 2026. Learn more about the program here.

$7M grant from NASA, Schmidt Sciences to upgrade arXiv. Cornell Tech has received more than $7 million from Schmidt Sciences and NASA to upgrade arXiv, an open-access research repository of more than 2.8 million articles. The funding will help arXiv - which is maintained and operated by Cornell Tech - finish migrating to cloud infrastructure and modernizing its code. It will also support the development of tools that offer personalized recommendations for discovering preprints. "I am profoundly grateful for this generous support from both Schmidt Sciences and NASA," said Greg Morrisett, the Jack and Rilla Neafsey Dean and Vice Provost of Cornell Tech. "This investment will ensure that arXiv can grow sustainably and continue to serve the needs of the global research community well into the future." Ramin Zabih, arXiv's executive director and professor of computer science at Cornell Tech, said the repository is undergoing a technology transformation to meet future challenges and respond effectively to changes affecting the research community. "The funding from Schmidt Sciences and NASA will allow us to complete our technology migration while simultaneously exploring ways to improve the service," said Zabih, who is also affiliated with the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. "We are grateful to Schmidt Sciences and NASA for supporting arXiv in its efforts to build a stronger foundation for the future." Schmidt Sciences' gift will allow arXiv to maintain an expanded development team and finish modernization without disrupting operations. NASA's grant will fund research into fairer, more effective discovery tools and help arXiv expand into subject areas of interest to the agency, such as planetary science. "Schmidt Sciences is thrilled to help support arXiv migrate to modern, scalable cloud technology, and ensure it can sustainably meet the accelerating demands of the global research community,"said James Ricci, director of science systems at Schmidt Sciences. "We hope that this will continue advancing open science for years to come." Founded in 1991 by Paul Ginsparg, professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences and of informations science in Cornell Bowers, arXiv has become a cornerstone of open science that serves scholars in physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, finance, statistics, electrical engineering and economics. In addition to the new gifts and grants, arXiv receives ongoing support from the Simons Foundation, academic libraries, universities, research organizations, professional societies and individual donors. Grace Stanley is the staff writer-editor for Cornell Tech.