Frank Muci

Frank Muci is a Policy Fellow at LSE. He is an international economic development practitioner with experience advising governments in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe on growth policy, economic diversification and public financial management. 

In the five years prior to his appointment at LSE, Frank was at the Growth Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where he engaged on a number of applied research country projects. After working on Albania (from Tirana), he took part in applied research projects for Venezuela, Jordan, El Salvador, Loreto (state in Perú), Namibia, and Honduras. In 2019 and 2020, he was the teaching fellow for ‘Why are Countries Poor, Volatile and Unequal?’, a capstone economics and policy course at the Harvard Kennedy School by Prof. Ricardo Hausmann.

Frank holds a M.A. in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) from the Harvard Kennedy School and a B.A. in Physics and Philosophy from Brown University. 

Sid Ravinutala

Sid Ravinutala joined the Center for International Development’s Growth Lab as a Research Fellow in 2016.

Prior to joining CID, Sid worked at Accenture and more recently at the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) based in Uganda and the US. At CHAI, Sid worked on increasing access to HIV diagnosis and treatment by working with governments to design better programs and negotiating reduced pricing of commodities with manufacturers. Sid also worked as the summer and winter intern for the Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India where he worked on redesigning fertilizer policy and contributed to the chapter on financial inclusion in the 2016 Economic Survey of India. 

Sid has a keen interest in machine learning and data visualization, and leveraging these techniques to design better targeted government programs and policies that promote inclusive growth. 

Sid holds a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering and a Bachelor of Computer Science from University of Melbourne, and a Master in Public Administration/International Development from Harvard University. He was born in New Delhi, grew up in Melbourne, and loves playing squash, canoeing, and hiking.

Daniel Stock

Daniel was a part of the Center for International Development’s Growth Lab as a Research Fellow from 2015-2019. He also held this position from 2011-2013.

He studied how countries apply proactive strategies to promote structural transformation. His research focuses on using network models to uncover new opportunities for diversifying exports and attracting new sources of investment.

Prior to joining CID, Daniel was a Junior Professional Associate at the World Bank, working with governments to improve the investment climate for local businesses and FDI. Daniel has also worked as a researcher at the MIT Media Lab’s Macro Connections group, and a Research Intern at the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Santiago, Chile.

Daniel earned a B.S. in Quantitative Economics and International Relations from Tufts University. 

Rihab Babiker

Rihab Babiker is the Former Associate Director of Finance and Operations for the Growth Lab at Harvard’s Center for International Development. She led the program’s financial, operational and contractual activities, oversaw the Center’s financial health, and was involved in strategic planning.

Prior to joining the Growth Lab, Rihab spent a decade at the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in different countries including Afghanistan, Algeria, Italy, Jordan, Pakistan, and Tanzania. She held a series of financial positions of increasing responsibilities in financial reporting and management and was heavily involved with mapping business process to financial policies. Her last position was the financial advisor to the Country Director of WFP’s Yemen office, where she was responsible for monitoring four projects with a combined budget of $250 million. There she developed tools to analyze and report on financial and supply chain data that were used by senior management for daily operational planning and for long-term strategic setting.

Rihab holds a Masters in Managerial Finance from The Arab Academy for Management, Banking and Financial Studies and a BA in Finance and Banking from Al alBayt University.

Sehar Noor

Sehar Noor was a Research Assistant at the Center for International Development at Harvard University from 2016 to 2019. In this position, she has worked on research projects on economic growth and diversification in Sri Lanka and Saudi Arabia. Sehar works on topics ranging from labor market dynamics and growth diagnostics to trade and foreign direct investment. She has experience analyzing large-scale data and literature to study economic trends and inform policy design.

Sehar also has experience working on youth employability and workforce development in rural communities with the Aga Khan Rural Support Program in Pakistan. Before that, she worked with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Pakistan. She graduated from Rollins College in 2016 with a Bachelor’s in International Affairs and Economics.

Clement Brenot

Clement is currently the inaugural Director of the McGill Growth Lab and an Associate Professor (research) at the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University.

He previously served as Senior Research Manager at the Lab (2021-2026).

Prior to joining the Growth Lab, Clement spent nine years with the OECD, leading economic research projects in Europe, Turkey and Asia. Clement started his career with the Boston Consulting Group, serving public and private sector clients mainly in the infrastructure and financial services industries.

His research interests include: growth diagnostics in advanced, resource-rich and middle-income economies; macroeconomic policy; economic diversification and green industrial policy; innovation, AI and robotics; place-based growth strategies; and the political economy and implementation of difficult economic reforms.

Clement holds an MPA in International Development (MPA/ID) from the Harvard Kennedy School and an MSc from HEC Paris.

Mali Akmanalp

Mali is a former software engineer for CID who led backend development of the Atlas. He believes code is as much craft as engineering, and that like any craft, it can be honed with practice. He’s a big believer in the open source philosophy. Before working at CID, he’s been at a variety of organizations from Kayak.com to Turkish National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptology. When he’s not deep in code or lurking on Hacker News, he enjoys reading, writing, noodling on the guitar, running and hiking.

Andres Gomez

Andres joined the Center for International Development’s Growth Lab as a Postdoctoral Fellow in 2014.

He is currently investigating the mechanisms that explain the economic differences between cities in terms of their internal occupational and industrial mix. He is also helping with the development of atlases of economic complexity for Colombia, Mexico, and Peru.

Since his doctoral studies, he has been part of the Cities, Scaling and Sustainability research group at the Santa Fe Institute. There, he has been investigating the statistical properties of urban aggregate output to extract information about how cities coordinate heterogeneous and interdependent individuals in large scale production processes.

He holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Arizona State University, a Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering and a B.S. in Physics, both from La Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Colombia.

Miguel Angel Santos

Miguel Angel Santos joined the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 2021 as Visiting Professor in Practice and Director of the Growth Co-Lab, a joint LSE-Harvard venture aimed at bringing together the capacities, expertise, and reach of two top academic institutions to expand the activities of the Harvard Growth Lab globally.

Miguel was previously Director of Applied Research at the Harvard Growth Lab, where he led teams in policy engagements aimed at developing top notch research to help governments rethink their growth and development strategies. In his eight years at the Harvard Growth Lab, Miguel was directly involved in projects at the national level in Mexico, Peru, Panama, Venezuela, Jordan, Albania, and Namibia; at the state level in Loreto (Peru) and Chiapas (Mexico); and at the city level in Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Hermosillo (Mexico). He also performed as Adjunct Lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and as a Visiting Lecturer at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, teaching courses in Empirical Methods, Development Economics, Economic Growth and Development, and Policy Development Strategy to graduate students in public policy and public administration over the same period.

Before joining the field of development economics, Miguel held executive roles in corporate finance and business development in Latin America for a decade, performing as Director of Finance for the Cisneros Group of Companies (1997-2003), Head of Corporate Finance for Mercantil Servicios Financieros (2005-2007), and Business Vice-President for Sony Pictures and Entertainment Latin America (2008-2009).

He holds two Master of Science degrees in International Finance and Trade (2011) and Economics (2012) from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, a Master in Public Administration from Harvard University (2014), and a Ph.D. in Economics at Universidad de Barcelona (2016).

Op-eds

• Impact of the 2017 Sactions on Venezuela: Revisiting the Evidence, Brookings Institution, May 2019
• How did Venezuela’s Exchange Control Wound Global Companies?, Vox LACEA, July 2018
• El Paquete de Marudo no logrará ni estabilizar la miseria, The New York Times, September 2018
• ¿Llevará la hiperinflación a la transición democrática en Venezuela? The New York Times, January 2018

Neave O’Clery

Originally from Dublin, Neave O’Clery is a Fulbright Scholar and former Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Development at Harvard University where she worked in the field of complexity/network theory and economic development. Neave received her PhD in Mathematics from Imperial College London, and was previously an MSc student at Lincoln College, Oxford. She undertook her undergraduate studies at University College Dublin, which included a year at Ecole Polytechnique, Lausanne. Neave is also founder and Editor-in-Chief of ANGLE, a online and print publication focusing on the intersection between science, policy, politics and international affairs.