GEM Incubation Fund

These grants will cover incubation and/or seed funding related to preliminary research ideas, such as conducting background research, developing collaborations, travel to collect data or visit field sites, materials, data purchase, and research assistant time. Funds may not be used to cover tuition, faculty salaries, or stipends. Indirect costs are capped at 20%.

The average grant size is expected to be around $20,000. Smaller grants with demonstrated value for money will be more competitive. The suggested period of performance is six to twelve months.

Faculty with PI rights at their university are eligible to apply to the GEM Incubation Fund. Preference will be given to applicants who attended GEM and to proposals that include academic and practitioner collaborations focused on what successful development of AI technologies in emerging country contexts looks like for developing economies. This funding will support research projects ready to begin work immediately, with demonstrated buy-in from relevant researchers and practitioners. Faculty are allowed to submit one application per round.

Researchers should submit their proposals through CID's Online Application Portal. Any questions may be directed to gem@hks.harvard.edu. 

The application will include the following materials:

• Applicant information
• Two-page PDF CV for all PI’s and Co-PI’s
• Project summary
• Policy problem & motivation
• Project contributions
• Research methodology & design
• Project viability & risks
• Project timeline
• Budget and Budget Narrative (budget template can be accessed here)
  • Letter of support from recipient institution (required for external applicants only)
  • Letters of support from any policy partners/local collaborators (optional)

For applicants applying from outside Harvard University, please have your institution refer to the Award Under GEM Incubation Fund Agreement Template to review the terms and conditions and ensure you are following the grant application guidelines of your home institution. Please note we will not be able to accommodate significant changes to those terms.

Proposals are reviewed and scored by the GEM Incubation Fund Review Board. All board members submitting a proposal in the current funding round must recuse themselves from this review. Based on the scores and referee comments, the review board votes on the application status.

In addition to prioritizing incubation and/or seed funding, related to preliminary research ideas, the below criteria should serve as guiding principles for research proposals.

Academic Contribution: Does the proposed study have the potential to make a significant contribution toward advancing knowledge in the field and existing body of research? Does it seek to answer new questions or introduce novel methods, measures, or interventions?

Policy Relevance: Does the study seek to address questions crucial to understanding pressing issues on what successful development of AI technologies in emerging country contexts looks like? What are the likely broader implications? Is there potential for the proposed work to be scaled up by policy partners and/or others?

Technical Design: How well does the research design proposed and/or to be developed appropriately answer the questions outlined in the proposal?

Project Viability: What is the viability of the proposed work and anticipated risks associated with carrying it out? Are there appropriate mitigating measures in place?

As a condition of accepting funding, each grant recipient will be required to submit a 750-1,000 word written reflection which highlights the problem your research is trying to solve and how your team is approaching it. The article should be accompanied by 3-4 high resolution photos of your work and research team. The article will be published on CID Voices and amplified on CID’s social media channels, at the discretion of CID’s communications team. This deliverable will be due at the midpoint of the project period. Awardees will also submit a final technical and financial report due 60 days after the project’s completion. Grantees will agree to participate in one CID activity or event as a condition of their award. This could be a Friday Speaker Series or presenting at a future internal-to-CID meeting.

Funding will be awarded with the presumption that money will be used only for academic/research costs (e.g., RA time, survey collection, participant incentives, etc.). If the budget includes funding to cover activities such as, but not limited to, focus groups, product design, marketing, or any other direct costs that would normally be funded by a business as part of its day-to day operations, the application should explain why the implementer/firm cannot bear these costs in the budget narrative. In general, activities that would occur anyway even absent the research should not be funded, while those that should typically be covered by the firm but would not have been implemented without research should be justified.

PIs should ensure a written agreement which safeguards the PI’s intellectual freedom to publish. This includes specifying who owns the data and ensuring that any third party’s right of review is limited to preventing the disclosure of confidential information.

A Data Use Agreement should be in place when using administrative data provided by the company. Though it is not a requirement that the partner be named in the paper, the decision of whether to do so should be made in writing and ex ante so that it does not depend on the results.

The GEM Incubation Fund has been supported by Harvard Center for International Development (CID), the World Bank South Asia Digital team, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA), the Harvard Data Science Initiative, the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University, and the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School (WAPPP).