Patricio Goldstein

Patricio joined the Growth Lab in 2019 and remained with it through 2022. He worked on Applied Research projects in Albania, Colombia, Ethiopia, Honduras, Jordan, and South Africa.

He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Economics at Columbia University. 

Camila Porto

Camila Porto recently graduated from the Master in Applied Economics at Northeastern University, with a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Universidad de la Republica, Uruguay. She was awarded the Fulbright scholarship to study in the United States and currently she is doing her post-academic training in the Growth Lab at Harvard Kennedy School. During her Masters, she worked with Prof. Bilge Erten and Prof. Catalina Herrera as a research assistant in topics related to Gender and International Development like internal migration in West Africa and time allocation and water resources in India. Back in Uruguay, she worked at CIEDUR an NGO focused on Interdisciplinary Development Investigations in the area of gender and labor market.

João Alcántara

João Alcántara is a second-year Master in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) student at Harvard Kennedy School, where he is a Lemann Scholar. He holds a B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering from Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, Brazil.

Before coming to Harvard, João worked as a data scientist for one of Latin America’s largest financial institutions, where he used machine learning to solve retail and investment banking business problems. He also has public sector consulting experience, having worked with the governments of Brazil, Estonia and México in projects ranging from science and technology promotion to government digitalization to private sector development. His interests are focused on the impact of machine learning on economics and public policy, government digital transformation, political economics and public economics.

Ermal Frasheri

Ermal Frasheri joined the Center for International Development’s Growth Lab as a Research Fellow in 2014.

Ermal finished his doctoral studies, S.J.D, at Harvard Law School, where he worked in the areas of law and economic development, international law, European integration, and social and political theories. He has written papers on legal reform and comparative law, European Union, financial services, international law, and his dissertation examined the relationship between regional integration in the context of European integration and development strategies.

Ermal has taught at Harvard in various roles since 2006 in the fields of political and social theories, European integration and EU law, democracy, international institutions, and sociology. He was awarded a teaching excellence award by Harvard, and was appointed a Byse Fellow at Harvard Law School (fall 207) where he taught a series of workshops on Law and Development. He has also taught International Law at Babson College, and European Union law at New England Law – Boston. Currently, Ermal teaches courses on Law and Corruption, and International Law and Migration at the Sturm College of Law, University of Denver.

Kyle Soeltz

Kyle Soeltz is a Front-end developer and works on the Growth Lab’s Atlas of International Complexity. He is passionate about building great user interfaces and supports the Atlas with new features and improvements. Prior to joining CID, he built and designed front-end systems at Motivis Learning, an education software startup looking to help revolutionize the way our country learns. He also worked at COMSOL Multiphysics, a physics simulation software company where he built tools and resources for the engineers that use the product.

In between his time at Motivis and his start at CID, Kyle spent nearly 6 months hiking from Mexico to Canada along the Pacific Crest Trail. While on the trail, he promoted his trip online and used it to raise money for mental health research and trail conservation efforts.

Kyle holds a degree in Graphic Design and a minor in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts Lowell. In his free time, he enjoys hiking, climbing, cooking, and creating side projects.

Ibrahim Hassen

Ibrahim Worku Hassen joined the Center for International Development’s (CID) Growth Lab as a Research Fellow in 2019.

Before joining CID, Ibrahim worked for the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) as Consultant and Research Assistant, where he worked on a number of national projects. To name a few, the Feed the Future (FtF), the Agricultural Growth Program (AGP), the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) and others. Before joining IFPRI, Ibrahim taught microeconomics and statistics courses as part-time lecturer at Department of Economics, Addis Ababa University. Ibrahim also has consultancy work experience with the World Bank. Recently, he was a teaching fellow (TF) for Policy Analysis and Design and Math camp at Harvard Kennedy School. Ibrahim was an intern at UNECA analyzing child poverty on middle income countries.

Ibrahim authored/co-authored journals and book chapters on a number of development issues: diet transformation in Africa, seasonality and household diets, demand for animal sourced foods, demand elasticity of livestock products, book chapter on ‘Teff’ consumption pattern, the link between economic growth and road transport in Ethiopia, wages and food price inflation, determinants of primary commodity export in Africa and others.   

His recent research interest focuses on analysis of growth diagnostics, complexity analysis and diverse development issues: agricultural productivity, poverty, consumption and nutrition analysis. 

Ibrahim holds BA in Economics from Addis Ababa University and double masters in Master in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) from the Harvard Kennedy School and Masters in Economic Analysis from Addis Ababa University.

Yang Li

Yang LI joined the Center for International Development’s Growth Lab as a Postdoctoral Fellow in 2019.

His research focuses on the patterns, processes, and sustainability of industrial development in cities. By integrating the view of economic complexity and industrial ecology, he aims to understand the diversification of industries in cities, measure the environmental impact of diversification through changes of material and energy flows, and investigate the sustainable pathways of industrial development, especially for cities in developing countries.

He holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering (2019) and a Bachelor degree in Environmental Engineering (2012), both from Tsinghua University, China.

Eduardo Levy Yeyati

Eduardo Levy Yeyati is the Dean of School of Government at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, and the founding Director of the Center for Evidence-Based Policy (CEPE-Di Tella). He is also a Principal Researcher at Argentina’s CONICET, a consulting member of CARI (Argentina’s top think tank), a Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Growth Lab, and a member of the Editorial Board of AS/COA’s Americas Quarterly.

In the past, Eduardo was senior adviser to the Office of the Chief of Staff in Argentina and Director of Argentina 2030 (Argentina’s Presidential program for long-term strategic thinking), Director at the Bank of Investment and Trade Credit (BICE), Head of Latin American Research and Emerging Markets Strategy at Barclays Capital, Senior Financial Sector Adviser for Latin America and the Caribbean at the World Bank, and Chief Economist and Monetary and Financial Policy Manager of the Central Bank of Argentina. He was also the founding President of the National Council of Production, and President of CIPPEC (an Argentine think tank).

Eduardo is the top ranked economic researcher in Argentina according to rankings in RePEc and Google Scholar. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BSc in Engineering from Universidad de Buenos Aires.

James McNerney

James McNerney is a senior researcher at the Growth Lab in the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He joined the team in 2018.

His research interests lie at the intersection of economic and physical systems with a particular focus on the dynamics of technologies. His research examines the processes by which technologies evolve and how this leads to performance improvements, adoption, environmental impacts, and macroeconomic outcomes of economic growth and structural transformation. He draws on frameworks in complex networks, engineering, and economics to describe and understand these processes.

Before coming to the Growth Lab, McNerney was a researcher and Leading Technology and Policy Fellow at the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at MIT. He was a graduate fellow at the Santa Fe Institute and Boston University, where he completed a PhD in physics.

Daniela Muhaj

Daniela joined the Center for International Development’s Growth Lab as a Research Fellow in 2018.

Before joining the CID, she worked with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington D.C. conducting country surveillance and research on labor markets, economic polarization, and structural reforms. She has also investigated the macroeconomic effects of the 2008 financial crisis with the Central Bank of Slovenia, and worked as a business consultant at the Center for Innovation & Growth (Cleveland, Ohio). In 2013, she received an ASIANetwork Freeman Foundation fellowship to conduct field research on the socio-economic effects of urban relocation and demolition in China.

Daniela holds a dual degree in Mathematical Economics and International Relations from Baldwin Wallace University, and a Master’s in International Economics and Relations from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

She is enthusiastic about harnessing the power of mathematical modeling, econometric techniques, machine learning, and behavioral economics to diagnose economic issues and inform effective policy making. Her research interests include labor economics (the future of work, upskilling, employment polarization), structural reforms, economic diversification, network science, and complexity.