Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Policy

Avi Goldfarb is the Rotman Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare and a professor of marketing at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Avi is also Chief Data Scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab, a faculty affiliate at the Vector Institute and the Schwartz-Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Avi’s research focuses on the economic effects of information technology.

Along with Ajay Agrawal and Joshua Gans, Avi is the author of the Globe & Mail bestselling book Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence. His latest book, Power and Prediction, was published in November 2022 by Harvard Business Review Press.

Timothy DeStefano is an Associate Professor of Research at the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business. He is an applied economist with expertise in the areas of digital technology, artificial intelligence (AI), industrial robotics, firm productivity and trade. His research at Georgetown examines the effects of digital technology on firm reorganization and performance using a mixture of field experiments and observational data techniques.

Flavio Calvino is an Economist in the Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation at the OECD. His work mainly focuses on business and employment dynamics, innovation, the role of the digital transformation, and the diffusion of Artificial Intelligence. His research has been published in academic journals including Industrial and Corporate Change, the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, and the Journal of Economic Surveys. Flavio holds a dual Ph.D. in Economics from Paris School of Economics – Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Italy), a M.Sc. and B.Sc. from Bocconi University, and a M.Sc. from Copenhagen Business School.

Katherine Stapleton is currently a Country Economist for China and Cambodia in the World Bank's Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment Global Practice, where she works on international trade, emerging technologies, labor economics, development and climate policy.  She joined the World Bank in 2020 on the Young Professionals Program and has since worked in the Development Economics Research Group's Trade and International Integration unit and as Country Economist for Ghana.

In September 2020 she completed her PhD in Economics from Oxford University.  She is a Visiting Researcher at Oxford University's Center for the Study of African Economies and an External Research Fellow at the UK's Institute for the Future of Work.

Iavor Bojinov is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration and the Richard Hodgson Fellow at Harvard Business School. He is the co-PI of the Data Science Operations Lab, and a faculty affiliate in the Department of Statistics at Harvard University and the Harvard Data Science Initiative. His research and writings center on data science operations, aiming to understand how companies should overcome the methodological and operational challenges presented by the novel applications of data science. On the methodological side, he is particularly focused on causal inference from experiments and observational studies in complex settings, such as interference, carry-over effects, and dynamics treatment assignment regimes.  His work has been featured in top Statistics, Economics, and Management journals such as Annals of Applied Statistics, Biometrika, the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Quantitative Economics, and Management Science.

Jonathan Timmis is an Economist in the Office of the Chief Economist for East Asia and the Pacific at the World Bank, where he researches the areas of digitalization and technological change, productivity and globalization. Before joining the Bank, Jonathan worked for the IFC, the OECD Productivity and Business Dynamics Division and as an Overseas Development Institute Fellow in Rwanda.
He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Nottingham and has published in journals including the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization and Review of International Economics.

Danbee Song is an Economist at the Center for Industrial Policy Research in the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade. She is an applied economist with expertise in the areas of productivity, firm dynamics, innovation, artificial intelligence, and environmental economics. Her research has been published in academic journals including the Journal of Environmental Management and Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management. She holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. in Applied Economics from the Ohio State University, and an M.S. and a B.B.A. from Yonsei University.

Frederic Warzynski is Professor in the Department of Economics and Business Economics at the Aarhus School of Business and Social Sciences (Aarhus BSS), University of Aarhus. He has a BA and an MA in Economics from Université Libre de Bruxelles, and a Ph.D. in Economics from KU Leuven. He was previously employed in post-doctoral positions at IDEI, Toulouse and the Aarhus School of Business, and as Assistant Professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. His fields of interest are industrial organization, productivity, organizational economics, labour economics and international trade, and he has been recently focusing on the implications of the diffusion of AI and robots in Denmark.

Olivia Igbokwe-Curry is an experienced Government Affairs leader with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. She's skilled in Government Procurement, State & Local Government Sales, Presenting Proposals, Presenting Solutions, and Trials. She has a JD focused in Law from Howard University School of Law.

Fabio Luzzi is a Technology Executive at Tapestry based out of NYC. He has extensive experience in building and leading teams to execute end-to-end Digital and Data transformation strategies by leveraging Data, ML & AI. Fabio has proven track record of driving profitable growth for enterprises across different industries such as Technology, Payment Services, Entertainment, Advertising and Retail. He has a Master of Science degree in Statistics and Economics from “La Sapienza” University in Rome, Italy and has global experience working in Italy, UK and the United States. 

Elina Noor is a senior fellow in the Asia Program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where she focuses on developments in Southeast Asia, particularly the impact and implications of technology in reshaping power dynamics, governance, and nation-building in the region.

She was previously director, political-security affairs and deputy director of the Washington, DC office of the Asia Society Policy Institute.

A native of Malaysia, Noor's work focuses on security developments in Southeast Asia, global governance and technology, and preventing/countering violent extremism.

Noor read law at Oxford University and obtained an LL.M. from The London School of Economics. She also holds an MA in security studies from Georgetown University where she was a Women in International Security Scholar.

Mincheol Choi is an associate research fellow at the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade (KIET). HIs research primarily focuses on the economics of innovation, new technologies, and R&D policy.His work has been published in academic journals such as Technovation, Management Decision, and Scientometrics. He holds a Ph.D. in Management Engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and a B.S. in Physics from Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH).

Scott Wallsten is President and Senior Fellow at the Technology Policy Institute and also a senior fellow at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy. He is an economist with expertise in industrial organization and public policy, and his research focuses on competition, regulation, telecommunications, the economics of digitization, and technology policy. He was the economics director for the FCC’s National Broadband Plan and has been a lecturer in Stanford University’s public policy program, director of communications policy studies and senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a senior fellow at the AEI – Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, an economist at The World Bank, a scholar at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and a staff economist at the U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisers. He holds a PhD in economics from Stanford University.