Pablo Astudillo-Estevez

Pablo Astudillo-Estevez is a computational social scientist, currently an Assistant Professor at the School of Economics at Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) and Founding Director of the USFQ Data Hub (Laboratory on Computational Social Science and Digital Humanities). He holds a PhD in Economic Geography and Complexity Economics from the University of Oxford (UK) and an MSc in Environment and Development from the University of Edinburgh. 

Pablo is also an associate fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the University of Oxford, and external faculty at the Complexity Science Hub – Vienna. Former research fellow at the Growth Lab at Harvard University, and visiting fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. Alumnus of the Global Complexity School at the Santa Fe Institute. 

His main interest lies in understanding how economies and places evolve and learn, and in finding ways to unlock their potential to create knowledge and innovate. More specifically, by analyzing massive data sets, Pablo studies the dynamics of the economic landscape that enable places (especially in the Global South) to become innovative and to climb the technology ladder.

In the applied policy space, Pablo serves as a Data Scientist at the World Bank – IBRD, where he has worked across the Finance, Competitiveness & Innovation Global Practice, the Poverty and Equity Global Practice, and the International Finance Corporation (IFC). He has also worked as a consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank, and advises governments and the private sector on ways to develop the foundations for sustainable, technology-enabled economies, as well as to harness the power of disruptive technology and data to solve development challenges.

Pablo has more than 20 years of experience in sustainable development and climate change. He was part of the Ecuadorian delegation that negotiated the UN Sustainable Development Goals at Rio+20 and the Paris Agreement at COP 21. Winner of the World Bank’s Development Prize – Ecuador and several academic awards.

Aurélien Saussay

Aurélien Saussay is a former Growth Lab Visiting Fellow, an Assistant Professor at the London School of Economics in the Grantham Research Institute and the co-founder and co-Director of the LSE Green Skills Lab. He is also an LSE’s Center for Economic Performance Associate, a member of the French Council of Economic Advisers (CAE), a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (2022-2025) and he has been a Visiting Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School in the Fall semesters 2024 and 2025.

His research lies at the intersection of environmental, labour and macroeconomics. His main agenda focuses on the employment impacts of decarbonization, leveraging large-scale online job vacancy datasets and modern NLP techniques in particular. His secondary research stream assesses the macroeconomic impacts of climate change mitigation policies.

He was previously an economist at OFCE, Sciences Po, where he led the environmental economics team. He remains one of the main co-authors of the Multi-sector Macroeconomic Model for the Evaluation of Environmental and Energy policies (ThreeME), which contributes to the IPCC AR7 National Scenarios database and is used extensively in France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Mexico, Indonesia and Tunisia.

Jhon Fonseca

Jhon Fonseca is a former Research Fellow at the Growth Lab at Harvard Kennedy School, where his research focused on structural transformation, trade margins, and the evolution of productive ecosystems. He brought more than two decades of combined experience as a policymaker, consultant, and entrepreneur at the intersection of international trade, economic diversification, and innovation.

As Vice Minister of Foreign Trade of Costa Rica (2014–2018), he oversaw national trade and investment policy, led the country’s participation in regional integration forums, and served as chief negotiator of several free trade agreements. He has also consulted for the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and European Union on trade facilitation and competitiveness. In the private sector, he co-founded initiatives to develop technology and innovation ecosystems, linking entrepreneurship with sustainable development.

Fonseca is a PhD candidate in Economic History at the University of Barcelona, where his work examines the long-run dynamics of Costa Rica’s trade structure. He also teaches at the University of Costa Rica and continues to advise governments and businesses on strategy, trade, and innovation.

Martina Cometti

Martina Cometti joined the Growth Lab as an applied Research Fellow in 2025. She specializes in international macroeconomics and finance. Her career spans the private sector, government, and multilateral development banking.

She began in Argentina’s asset-management industry, conducting financial research and managing portfolios for institutional investors. She then joined the Ministry of Economy, where she oversaw national health-care spending and budgeting. Moving to Washington, DC, Martina worked at IDB Invest, mobilizing capital for development projects across Latin America and the Caribbean in sectors such as clean energy, health, financial inclusion, and transportation.

During the summer of 2024, while pursuing graduate studies, she served as a research intern at the Central Bank of Armenia, contributing to monetary-policy analysis.

Martina holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Buenos Aires and a Master’s in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) from Harvard Kennedy School.

Yuchen Guo

Yuchen “Mo” Guo is a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Growth Lab for the academic year 2024/2025 and a PhD candidate in economics at LMU Munich and ifo Institute. His research focuses on structural change, technology and the labor market, using both aggregate and micro data. During his time at the Growth Lab, he will explore the application of network approaches to questions related to inequalities in the labor market and how economies and individuals adapt to changing labor markets in the face of technological change.

Pia Andres

Pia is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics and is visiting the Growth Lab until the end of October 2024. Her research focuses on the technological shift towards a low carbon and increasingly digital economy.

She has recently completed her PhD in Environmental Economics at LSE. Before joining the Centre for Economic Performance, she was a researcher at the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Work at the University of Oxford.

Pia’s previous and ongoing research studies how the global transition to a low carbon economy affects, and is affected by, countries’ interactions in global trade; the relationship between progress in AI and green energy; and the role of policy in shaping the trajectory of AI innovation, among other related topics. During her time at the Growth Lab, she will explore the application of network approaches to technological change, and its relationship with economic development.

Antoine Cornevin

Antoine is a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Growth Lab for the 2024/2025 academic year and a Ph.D. candidate in International Economics at the Geneva Graduate Institute.

His research focuses on international macroeconomics and finance, and international trade. At the Growth Lab, Antoine explores how the structure of countries’ import and export bases —such as the concentration of trading partners and the elasticity of traded products—affects how market participants form economic expectations during global geopolitical events.”

David Torun

David is a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Growth Lab for the 2024/2025 academic year. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of St.Gallen and was previously a postdoctoral researcher at UC San Diego, funded by an SNSF Postdoc.Mobility fellowship.

His research focuses on international trade and international economics, particularly the stability of trade relations, the propagation of shocks through transportation networks, and the role of history in shaping trade patterns.

During his time at the Growth Lab, he will explore how global trade disruptions – such as protectionist measures and geopolitical conflicts – affect the formation and stability of trade relationships and production networks.

By modeling the role of critical suppliers in global value chains, he aims to provide tools for predicting how countries should respond to trade disruptions.

Pierre-Alexandre Balland

Pierre-Alexandre Balland is a former Visiting Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Growth Lab. He works with the academic team to advance fundamental research on economic complexity and its applications to technological change, industrial policy, green growth, and the future of work. Pierre-Alex currently serves as the Chief Data Scientist of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, where he leads a team that leverages artificial intelligence and data science tools to address a wide range of public policy challenges. He is also a research fellow at the Artificial and Natural Intelligence Toulouse Institute and he is starting a third term in ESIR, the high-level expert group that advises the European Commission on research and innovation policy. He is originally from the South of France and previously held positions at Utrecht University, MIT, and UCLA.

Gonzalo Arana

Gonzalo joined Harvard’s Growth Lab as a Visiting Fellow in 2024. Before that, he completed the mid-career Master in Public Administration at the Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to joining Harvard, Gonzalo was an associate partner at Oliver Wyman, where he led the Public Sector department in Spain and Portugal. Over the past ten years, he has advised companies and institutions in Greece, Italy, Germany, the UK, South Africa, Portugal, and Spain. In 2021, he joined the Spanish Chamber of Commerce to launch strategic projects for the private sector and was part of an expert group that included Spanish Public Administrations to develop strategies to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19.

Since 2016, Gonzalo has been the founder and chair of Proyecto Capicua, a small NGO dedicated to assisting underprivileged children in the suburbs of Madrid, focusing on facilitating their access to education. Gonzalo holds an MBA from INSEAD Business School, an MSc in Economics from the University of Navarra-IESE, and a BA in Management. He is also an Aspen Institute Spain Fellow. His research interests at the Growth Lab include growth diagnostics, green growth, and innovation policy.  He complements this fellowship with his position leading the Public Sector practice at Oliver Wyman in Spain and Portugal.