Ashoka team makes waves with AI-driven climate proposal at Harvard.

A team of four Ashoka students—Soumyajit Basu, Fiona Arora, Aryan Nath, and Karan Kumar—secured a rare opportunity to present in person at the Policy Hackathon of the India Conference at Harvard (ICH). Mentored by Dr. Lipika Dey, this group was the only student team selected among over 1,000 participants, including professionals, policy experts, and researchers.

“We were the only student team shortlisted amongst thousands of teams of students, professionals and experts,” said Fiona when asked about her experience of presenting at the India Conference at Harvard.

The hackathon, organised in collaboration with the Indian School of Business (ISB) and GDi Partners, focused on crafting innovative, data-backed solutions to policy challenges. Their project addressed climate vulnerability at the block level in India, proposing a novel clustering-based framework leveraging deep learning and detailed data analytics. The team’s research offers targeted, actionable insights to help policymakers identify the most vulnerable regions and devise adaptive strategies to build climate resilience.

With generous support from the Mphasis AI & Applied Tech Lab, Fiona Arora represented the team, presenting their data-driven solutions to a distinguished panel of judges and contributing to global policy discussions on climate adaptation.