MIT Sloan PhD Students Alice Cai and Peyman Shahidi Named 2026 Rafel Lucea Memorial Award Recipients

The MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research (IWER) is proud to announce the 2026 Rafel Lucea Memorial Research Award recipients. The annual award provides funding to MIT Sloan doctoral students for innovative research in social and environmental sustainability, honoring Lucea's legacy and advancing IWER's mission to improve workers' lives and guide inclusive workplace practices.

Alice Cai, a first-year doctoral student in Information Technology at MIT Sloan, has won the 2026 Rafel Lucea Memorial Research Award for her proposal "Voices at the Table: Engaging Stakeholders in Deliberation on AI & the Future of Work." Working with an interdisciplinary team of MIT researchers spanning management sciences, media arts, government and policy, and natural sciences, Cai plans to undertake a series of structured, multi-stakeholder conversations across education, healthcare, government, science, creative industries, and low-wage services. The project investigates how AI reshapes work and where worker, manager, and community interests converge or conflict, with findings to be published as both academic research and public video content.

Peyman Shahidi, a doctoral student in Information Technology (2023) at MIT Sloan, receives an Honorable Mention for his research, "Generative AI and the Skill Content of Jobs" (conducted with Soumitra Shukla of Harvard Business School and the Burning Glass Institute). Shahidi's project uses job posting data to measure how generative AI is changing employer skill demands and which workers are most affected, combining quantitative analysis of skill distribution changes with qualitative surveys of HR leaders and managers to reveal how organizational choices about hiring and skills shape whether AI-driven change serves broad worker welfare or concentrates opportunity.

About the Rafel Lucea Memorial Research Award

The Rafel Lucea Memorial Research Award was established at MIT Sloan in 2016 in memory of the late Rafel Lucea, who earned his PhD from MIT Sloan in s2007. Lucea, who went on to be a professor of international business at George Washington University, passed away in 2015 after a two-year battle with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) brain cancer.

A much-admired scholar, colleague, and friend, Lucea focused his research on a central tension in modern capitalism: the compatibility and balance between the interests of profit-seeking organizations and the overall, long-term welfare of communities, societies, and the environment. 

The announcement of this year’s award took place at the IWER research seminar on April 28.