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.

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.

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.

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.

Gonzalo Arana

Gonzalo joined Harvard’s Growth Lab as a Visiting Fellow in 2024. Before that, he completed the mid-career Master in Public Administration at the Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to joining Harvard, Gonzalo was an associate partner at Oliver Wyman, where he led the Public Sector department in Spain and Portugal. Over the past ten years, he has advised companies and institutions in Greece, Italy, Germany, the UK, South Africa, Portugal, and Spain. In 2021, he joined the Spanish Chamber of Commerce to launch strategic projects for the private sector and was part of an expert group that included Spanish Public Administrations to develop strategies to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19.

Since 2016, Gonzalo has been the founder and chair of Proyecto Capicua, a small NGO dedicated to assisting underprivileged children in the suburbs of Madrid, focusing on facilitating their access to education. Gonzalo holds an MBA from INSEAD Business School, an MSc in Economics from the University of Navarra-IESE, and a BA in Management. He is also an Aspen Institute Spain Fellow. His research interests at the Growth Lab include growth diagnostics, green growth, and innovation policy.  He complements this fellowship with his position leading the Public Sector practice at Oliver Wyman in Spain and Portugal.

Publications

Robert Pell

Bob Pell joined the Growth Lab as a Visiting Fellow in 2024. He is an urban planner with a career in forming, building and leading multidisciplinary firms and teams across five continents. He has worked in the UK in the public sector and then private consulting, mostly in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. In 1999 he moved to the USA and for ten years he worked for AECOM, the largest publicly traded AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) firm, where he was the Director of Operations. In 2016, Bob joined Hatch, a Canadian international consulting firm, where he created a unique international team – Urban Solutions – a team of urban economists, planners, designers and policy analysts- in the USA, Canada, UK, South Africa and Australia.

 

In 2023 Bob was a Fellow in the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative where he worked on forming a coalition to work with cities and communities in developing countries that are tackling the issues of climate change, urbanization and economic growth opportunities. 

 

Bob has a degree in Politics and Economics from University of Southampton, UK and a Graduate Diploma in Town Planning from Oxford Brookes University, UK.

Alexandre de Queiroz Stein

Alexandre joined the Growth Lab as a Visiting Fellow in 2024. He holds a Master Degree in Economics and he is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the Center for Development and Regional Planning at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (CEDEPLAR/UFMG), Brazil.

 

His research is in the field of urban and regional development and quantitative methods, focused on the economic complexity approach. His ongoing PhD thesis is about economic complexity at the intra-urban level, specifically on spatial distribution patterns underlying productive diversification in large Brazilian cities. He is also a member of the Research Groups on Public Policy and Development (GPPD/UFMG) and the Research Group on Regional Economic Resilience (RESILIRE). He has experience in research and consulting projects on topics such as regional development and productive diversification. Currently, he also serves as the manager of the data analytics team at DataViva—a data visualization platform with a specific focus on the economic complexity approach for Brazil.

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.