Jhon Fonseca

Jhon Fonseca is a Research Fellow at the Growth Lab at Harvard Kennedy School, where his research focuses on structural transformation, trade margins, and the evolution of productive ecosystems. He brings 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.

Lili Vessereau

Lili Vessereau is a Research Fellow at the Harvard Growth Lab, focusing on sovereign debt, public finance, and trade economics. Lili previously worked at the World Bank, in an advisory position within the French Government at the Ministry of Finance, at the United Nations, and gained experience in investment banking.

A former Bretton Woods 2.0 Fellow at the Atlantic Council, she is also a European Investment Fund Empowering Equity Fellow, a GLOBSEC Young Leader, a European Leadership Network Young Leader, and a Global Shaper of the World Economic Forum. She has held fellowships with Google, OSCE, the University Consortium (Sciences Po, Harvard, Oxford, Columbia), and served as France’s Youth Delegate to the Council of Europe.

Lili holds Master’s degrees from the Harvard Kennedy School (Public Policy, With distinctions), Sciences Po Paris (Public Affairs), La Sorbonne (Law, With Honors), and HEC Paris (Finance, Dean’s List), equipping her with a multidisciplinary perspective on finance, governance, and sustainable development.

Nils Rochowicz

Nils is a Visiting Fellow at the Growth Lab for the fall term 2025, working on understanding and predicting the dynamics of economic complexity. He is a PhD student in mathematics at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at Oxford University, and a PhD student in economics at the Chemnitz University of Technology.

Nils’s broader research agenda centers on technology: Where do new technologies come from, and how do they impact the economy and society? He has worked on technology prediction, measurement of patent novelty and impact, evolution of technology networks, effectiveness of technology policies, industrial policy, and the labour market impacts of new technologies. To tackle these questions, Nils develops and uses advanced tools from mathematics, physics, and network science, and aims to combine these with methodologies and insights from economics.

During his stay at the Growth Lab, his research focusses on studying the combinatorial and economic processes underlying economic complexity at fine-grained levels. To do this, he leverages novel methodologies to understand how economic complexity changes with respect to changing trade patterns and economic policies. In a second project, he uses highly disaggregated firm level datasets to understand how firm-level economic processes shape the evolution of country-level comparative advantage. Furthermore, he is interested in understanding and measuring economic complexity at the technological frontier.

Thomas Abt

Thomas Abt is a Senior Research Fellow with the Center for International Development, where he leads CID’s Security and Development Seminar Series. He is also a member of the Campbell Collaboration Criminal Justice Steering Committee, member of the Advisory Board of the Police Executive Programme at the University of Cambridge, and a Senior Fellow with the Igarapé Institute in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Both in the United States and globally, Abt writes, teaches, and studies the use of evidence-informed approaches to reduce urban violence, among other criminal justice topics. His forthcoming book, Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence – and a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets, was published by Basic Books in June 2019. Abt’s work is frequently featured in major media outlets such as the Atlantic, Economist, Foreign Affairs, New Yorker, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, and National Public Radio.

Before joining Harvard, Abt served as Deputy Secretary for Public Safety to Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York, where he oversaw all criminal justice and homeland security agencies, including the Divisions of Corrections and Community Supervision, Criminal Justice Services, Homeland Security and Emergency Services, and the State Police. During his tenure, Abt led the development of New York’s GIVE (Gun-Involved Violence Elimination) Initiative, which employs evidence-informed, data-driven approaches to reduce gun violence.

Before his work in New York, Abt served as Chief of Staff to the Office of Justice Programs at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked with the nation’s principal criminal justice grant-making and research agencies to integrate evidence, policy, and practice. He played a lead role in establishing the National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention, a network of federal agencies and local communities working together to reduce youth and gang violence. Abt was also founding member of the Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative, a place-based development effort that was recognized by the Kennedy School as one of the Top 25 Innovations in Government for 2013.

Abt received a bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Michigan and a law degree with honors from the Georgetown University Law Center.

Ljubica Nedelkoska

Ljubica Nedelkoska joined the Center for International Development’s Growth Lab as a Visiting Scholar in 2012 and as a Research Fellow in 2013.

Before joining the CID, she worked as a post-doctoral researcher and a coordinator of the Economics of Innovation Research Group in Jena, and as a research fellow at the Zeppelin University, both in Germany.

Her research area is empirical labor economics, with focus on human capital, human mobility, migration and diasporas, and skill-technology relations. By studying these topics, she aims to understand how economies change their skill portfolios through the processes of on-the-job learning, interacting with technologies, and formal education and training; and how these changes transform the countries’ levels of productivity and development. She is also interested in economic policy and has participated in several economic policy projects in Albania, Sri Lanka, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.

She holds a PhD in Economics of Innovation from the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, Germany and a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the Appalachian State University, North Carolina.

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.

Karan Daryanani

Karan is an Economic Analysis and Data Management (EADM) Fellow at the Growth Lab, where he leverages developments in network science, machine learning, and economic complexity to advance the green growth research agenda. He is committed to building platforms for climate intelligence, most recently having developed deep learning pipelines for research at Harvard Business School’s Climate and Sustainability Impact Lab. 

Earlier in his career, he built analytics tools at Closed Loop Partners, and scaled climate technology ventures at Fashion for Good and Yunus Social Business. Karan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics, Political Science, and Sociology from Christ College, Bangalore, and a Master’s in International and Development Economics from Yale University.

His research interests are in computational methods for social science, sustainable innovation, and understanding transition dynamics in complex adaptive systems.

Santiago Segovia

Santiago Segovia is an Economic Analysis and Data Management Fellow at Harvard’s Growth Lab, where he applies his expertise in data science, economics, and policy analysis to support research on global economic growth. He holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Economics from Universidad Externado de Colombia and a Master’s in Computational Analysis and Public Policy (MSCAPP) from the University of Chicago.

Prior to joining Harvard, Santiago served as a Senior Advisor in the Financial Stability Department at the Central Bank of Colombia, where he led the implementation of AI-driven tools to enhance policy decision-making and strengthen financial stability frameworks. His role also involved international collaborations to train advanced and emerging economies in financial stability methodologies.

He gained further international experience as a consultant with The World Bank, leveraging geospatial data for spatial welfare analysis. His technical proficiency spans data science, machine learning, and geospatial analysis, with several impactful projects developed at the University of Chicago’s Data Science Institute, where he contributed to community-driven initiatives. As a Summer Fellow at Imago Global Grassroots, Santiago used data science techniques to evaluate the impact of large-scale social development programs in India, specifically analyzing women-led initiatives.

His diverse experiences reflect a commitment to using data-driven insights to address global economic and social challenges.

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.