Aurélien Saussay

Aurélien Saussay is a 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 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.

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.

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.

Roberto Albores

Roberto Albores joined the Growth Lab as a Visiting Fellow in 2023. His educational journey, marked by a Bachelor’s in Economics and Political Science from ITAM, studies at the London School of Economics, a Master’s in International Development and Policy from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, and a Mid-Career Master in Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School, has significantly shaped his multifaceted career.

Navigating through varying sectors, Roberto has been CEO at Chivo Olivo Company since 2018, contributing to the housing and agribusiness sectors. His political footprint, including roles as a Senator and Federal Congressman, is enriched by initiating significant economic initiatives, such as the Economic Development Fund (FOFOE) and establishing Special Economic Zones, with an intent focus on socio-economic upliftment in the region. His spirited participation in a gubernatorial race was a noteworthy endeavor in his political journey, reflecting his dedication to public service and governance.

Presently a Visiting Fellow at Harvard’s Growth Lab, Roberto blends theoretical knowledge with hands-on expertise in formulating economic development strategies. He reinvigorates his political activism in the current landscape, leading a rejuvenated political movement to catalyze economic development in Chiapas. Guided by a steadfast mission, he aims to foster economic growth through strategic public policies and astute business initiatives, ensuring a continued impact in politics, business, and societal development within Chiapas and beyond.

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.