Ana Abad
Ana Abad joined Harvard’s Growth Lab as a Research Fellow in 2024. Previously, she worked at the LSE’s Growth Co-Lab as a Research Assistant on the Tanzania project.
Before joining the Growth Lab, Ana worked as a Research Associate at the Latin America Political Economy and Globalization (LAPEG) program, a joint initiative by Georgetown Law and Universidad de Valparaiso, identifying opportunities for productive diversification, industrial policy, and green growth in Latin America, in the context of a shifting international economic law landscape.
She has also collaborated on projects with the Associate Dean of the LSE School of Public Policy, contributing to research on Mexico’s macroeconomic and political economy landscape, and was a Latin America Associate at the political risk consulting firm Eurasia Group, advising corporate and financial clients on issues related to the region’s political economy, including fiscal and trade policies and structural reforms.
Ana obtained a BA in Economics and International Affairs from The George Washington University and a Master of Public Administration from the London School of Economics. Her research interests include regional development, green growth, trade and industrial policy, social policy, and capacity-building.
Yaniv Azani
During his fellowship at the Growth Lab, Yaniv plans to leverage his extensive background in AI and machine learning to advance the “Atlas of Economic Complexity” project and contribute to the lab’s mission of understanding economic transformation. Drawing on his experience in technology development, international collaboration, and predictive modeling, he aims to enhance analytical capabilities to the current data the Growth Lab has collected by applying AI algorithms to large trade datasets, developing predictive models for growth and emerging industries (Like mapping the green industry supply chain to these patterns), predication of causal relationships between regions and leading industries/products, strengthen the technological infrastructure of the Atlas tool, and facilitate cross-disciplinary knowledge transfer. By integrating the power of machine learning models with rigorous research methodologies, seeking to deliver actionable new insights and enhance the decision support tools of the Atlas to catalyze shifting and collaboration across fields and industries for each region/Country.
Pierre-Alexandre Balland
Pierre-Alexandre Balland is a 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.
Johan Cañas Odreman
Johan joined the Growth Lab as a Research Fellow in 2024. Before joining the Growth Lab, Johan worked as a Macroeconomics Studies Official at the CAF Development Bank of Latin America in Caracas, Venezuela. In this role, he provided in-depth macroeconomic intelligence on 19 Latin American countries and monitored both internal and external economic risks to assess their impact on regional economic stability and development.
Other previous experiences include working with Mongolia’s Prime Minister’s office on energy policy strategy and with MEG Inteligencia de Datos in his home country, where he applied advanced statistical methods and machine learning techniques for business and policy consulting.
Johan holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Universidad Central de Venezuela. His research interests focus on growth diagnostics, economic complexity, energy economics, and the formulation of data-driven economic policies to promote equitable growth.
Simone Daniotti
Simone joined as a visiting research fellow in September 2023 and has been a Ph.D. candidate at the Complexity Science Hub since October 2021. He received his master’s degree in physics at the University of Studies of Milano with a thesis in collaboration with Sony Computer Science Laboratories Paris entitled “Maximum Entropy Approach for the prediction of Urban Mobility Patterns”. Simone is also pursuing his PhD at TU Wien.
Currently Simone’s research interest lies in the crossing point of social science and mathematics. His primary areas of focus revolve around mobility, public transportation, and the science of cities. He employs various methodologies, including complex network analysis, statistical methods, and agent-based simulations, to explore and understand these topics.
Guillermo Arcay
Before joining the Growth Lab, Guillermo worked as a Senior Economist at Ecoanalítica, a Venezuelan-based macroeconomic research & consulting firm. There, he served foreign and local private, multilateral, public, and social sector organizations, providing data, analysis, and advice to understand and navigate the Venezuelan macroeconomy.
He was also a professor of macroeconomics and international finance at Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (Venezuela). Other previous experience includes working on economic reform plans with the Venezuelan Opposition and the Government of Kazakhstan. His research interests are focused on industrial policy, innovation, sovereign wealth management, trade shocks, debt, inflation, fiscal policy, sanctions, and political economy.
He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (Venezuela) and a Master’s in Public Administration and International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School (MPA/ID 2023).
Taimur Shah
Taimur Shah joined the Growth Lab as a Research Fellow in 2023.
Before joining the Growth Lab, Taimur founded the Labs team at the Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan, a revenue-generating innovation unit focused on producing software with researchers, development practitioners, social entrepreneurs, and the government in order to address development issues in the country. They produced work particularly in the areas of education, health, COVID recovery, and food security.
Prior to his work in Pakistan, Taimur was a Software Architect on the Watson Prototypes and Cognitive Environments teams at IBM in New York City, where he worked on over a dozen projects and products that leveraged Watson’s Natural Language abilities in different business verticals. He started and sold his first startup in the product recommendation space while an undergrad at Columbia University, and then served as the VP of Engineering at Parrable.
Taimur holds a bachelor’s in Computer Science from Columbia Engineering and a Master’s in Public Administration in International Development from Harvard Kennedy School.
Taimur Shah
Taimur Shah joined the Growth Lab as a Research Fellow in 2023.
Before joining the Growth Lab, Taimur founded the Labs team at the Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan, a revenue-generating innovation unit focused on producing software with researchers, development practitioners, social entrepreneurs and the government in order to address development issues in the country. They produced work particularly in the areas of education, health, COVID recovery and food security.
Prior to his work in Pakistan, Taimur was a Software Architect on the Watson Prototypes and Cognitive Environments teams at IBM in New York City, where he worked on over a dozen projects and products which leveraged Watson’s Natural Language abilities in different business verticals. He started and sold his first startup in the product recommendation space while an undergrad at Columbia University, and then served as the VP of Engineering at Parrable.
Taimur holds a bachelors in Computer Science from Columbia Engineering, and a Masters in Public Administration in International Development from Harvard Kennedy School.
Basil Mahfouz
Basil Mahfouz is a Visiting Fellow at Harvard’s Growth Lab, where he conducts interdisciplinary research on the relationship between scientific research, technological growth and economic complexity. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy at University College London (UCL), in collaboration with Elsevier’s International Centre for the Study of Research (ICSR), utilizing cutting-edge computational tools and methods to develop a new framework for measuring the societal impact of scientific research.
Basil earned his Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and a Master of Science in Environmental Technology from Imperial College London. Prior to starting a PhD, he co-founded SynSapien, a collective intelligence platform for crowdsourcing environmental innovation, and worked as a strategic communications consultant for research organizations in the Middle East.
Lucila Venturi
Lucila joined the Growth Lab as a Research Fellow in 2022. Previously, she worked at the Lab as a Research Intern for the Jordan Project.
Before joining the Growth Lab, Lucila obtained her Master’s in Public Administration in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to that, she worked as a Research Analyst at the World Bank’s Chief Economist’s Office for Latin America and the Caribbean on social and fiscal policy topics. In particular, she analyzed the effects of income tax changes on income and labor outcomes. Before the World Bank, she worked as an Economic Advisor at the Ministry of Finance of both the state and national governments in Argentina on debt and macroeconomic policy.
Lucila also holds a B.Sc and M.Sc in Economics from Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Argentina). Her research interests focus on growth, fiscal policy, labor markets, social development, and inequality.