Business, AI, & Democracy Conference

His current research focuses on governance and corporate compensation, social capital markets and social metrics, and the application of machine learning to the study of solving social problems.  His work has led to publications in 538 on political slant in economic research, proposals to set gender mandates for boards by estimating tipping points, as well as on the use of structured finance for charitable giving to release value in the portfolio. In cooperation with IFMR in Chennai, colleagues and he completed a study on the prosocial attitudes of employees and incentives on the productivity of microfinance institutions. Most recently, colleagues and he completed research on machine-human learning using a video game setting, and he is working with NervTech and the University of Ljubljana on machine-human interactions in the autonomous driving vehicle simulators.

His research is widely cited and has been published in leading journals in economics, management, sociology, and computer science.  His most recent book is The Small Worlds of Corporate Governance, published by MIT Press in 2012. A collection of his past articles on real options and foreign investment and knowledge of the firm was published by Oxford University Press in 2008 under the title Knowledge, Options, and Institutions. He is currently writing a book on Power and Governance in Revolutionary Times. He has two entries in IMDb.

He has been a member of the academic advisory board to the chief economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and is or has been a director in corporate and academic boards in Europe, Russia, and India. He received his PhD from the MIT Sloan School of Management and holds an honorary doctorate from the Stockholm School of Economics. He has been an academic visitor at several research institutes, including Science Center Berlin (where he was the Karl Deutsch Professor), Ecole Polytechnique, Santa Fe Institute, SMU in Singapore, and Tsinghua University.

He directed the strategy and emerging-economy research centers and was the associate vice dean for the PhD program at Wharton and was the founder of the social entrepreneurship program at INSEAD. At Columbia University, he collaborated with Cambridge University to co-direct the Ariane de Rothschild Fellows Program that identified and trained social entrepreneurs with an interest in fostering a culture of mutual respect and dialogue among Jewish and Muslim communities.

In 2012-2013, he was a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in Berlin and was a member of its external board.  He is currently on the academic advisory board to the Institut Polytechnique de Paris and to Columbia University’s Global Center in Paris and Reid Hall.

He joined Columbia Business School in 1998, when he joined the Decision, Risk and Operations Division. Prior to becoming dean he served as chair of the Decision, Risk & Operations division at the Business School, Director of the School's doctoral program, and was a member of the executive committee of the University's Data Science Institute.

His research lies on the interface between applied mathematics, economics and engineering, with emphasis on stochastic networks, financial engineering, and algorithmic pricing and revenue management. Recent work has focused on market microstructure of electronic (financial) limit order book markets; the diffusion of information over social networks; the economics and control of queueing networks with strategic agents, such as the ones encountered in ride-hailing; and the application of algorithmic pricing in the residential real-estate market. His work has been recognized through several research awards. and he has advised 20 doctoral students that have gone to academia and industry.

Costis teaches courses in the MBA and PhD programs, and he has also received the Dean's award at Columbia Business School for teaching excellence for the core course Managerial Statistics, and the Dean's award for Teaching Innovation for his work on the Technology and Analytics curriculum in Columbia's MBA and EMBA programs.

Outside of the Business School, his experience has been focused on financial technology, asset management and markets, and digital technology. From 1991 to 1993 he served as a research scientist at Canon Research Center America, working on image processing and optical character recognition. In 2007, Costis helped found Mismi Inc., a venture-backed financial technology firm that introduced quantitative trading algorithms and transaction analytics tools to the equities market. He is a Fellow of INFORMS, an Honorary Fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, and a Member of the Economic Club of New York. He serves on the Board of Trustees of Athens College.

He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and member of the Executive Committee of the International Economic Association. In 2016-19, he served as the Chief Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Dr. Guriev’s research interests include contract theory, corporate governance, political economics and labour mobility. Dr. Guriev has published in international refereed journals including American Economic Review, Journal of European Economic Association, Journal of Economic Perspectives and American Political Science Review.

Prior to joining Sciences Po, Sergei GURIEV Dr. Guriev visited the Department of Economics at M.I.T. for a one-year post-doctoral placement in 1997-98, and in 2003-2004, the Department of Economics at Princeton University as a Visiting Assistant Professor. In 1999-2013, he was on the faculty of the New Economic School in Moscow, in 2004-13 being a tenured faculty member and Rector of the New Economic School.

Sergei GURIEV received his Dr. Sc. (habilitation degree) in Economics (2002) and PhD in Applied Math from the Russian Academy of Science (1994), and M.Sc. Summa Cum Laude from the Moscow Institute of Physics in Technology (1993).

Her research explores how psychological characteristics influence real-life outcomes in different business-related domains (e.g. financial well-being, consumer satisfaction or team performance), with the goal of helping businesses and individuals make better and more ethical decisions.

The research of Dr. Matz has been published in the world’s leading scientific journals and is frequently covered by major news outlets around the world. She has won numerous awards, including Data IQ’s most influential people in data-driven marketing, Pacific Standard’s 30 top thinkers under 30, and Poets and Quants 40 under 40 best business school professors.

At Columbia he is a founding member of the Department of Systems Biology, the executive committee of the Data Science Institute (https://datascience.columbia.edu/), and the Institute's education and entrepreneurship committees. He is also an affiliate of Columbia's Department of Statistics and a founding member of Columbia's Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (C2B2).

He is a co-founder and co-organizer of hackNY, a nonprofit which since 2010 has organized once a semester student hackathons and the hackNY Fellows Program, a structured summer internship at NYC startups. Prior to joining the faculty at Columbia he was a Courant Instructor at NYU (1998-2001) and earned his PhD at Princeton University (1993-1998) in theoretical physics. In 2014 he was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society and is a recipient of Columbia's Avanessians Diversity Award.

His research covers various topics related to the marketing and economics of media products, such as measuring advertising effectiveness, media persuasion, product design, and competition in media and digital product markets. 

Andrey’s papers have been published in top academic journals including Journal of Political Economy, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Marketing Science, Management Science, Journal of Marketing Research, and Quantitative Marketing and Economics, and have received multiple awards and grants. Before joining Columbia, Andrey got a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Professor Prat's work focuses on organizational economics and political economy. His current research in organizational economics explores - through theoretical modeling, field experiments, and data analysis - issues such as incentive provision, corporate leadership, employee motivation, and organizational language. Professor Prat is a principal investigator of the Executive Time Use Project. His current research in political economy attempts to define and measure the influence of the media industry on the democratic process.

He is the author of numerous articles in leading journals in economics and finance including the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Journal of Finance, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economic Studies, and the Review of Financial Studies. He served as Chairman and Managing Editor of the Review of Economic Studies. He is an Associate Editor of Theoretical Economics and a director of the Industrial Organization program of the Center for Economic Policy Research in London. Professor Prat was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2011 and a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 2013.

She received a joint Ph.D. in political science (Arts & Sciences) and communication (Annenberg) and an M.A. in statistics (Wharton) from the University of Pennsylvania. She received a B.A. in government from Harvard University.

Professor Kim’s research has been funded by Facebook (now Meta) as well as the Russell Sage Foundation. Her research has received several prizes, including the American Political Science Association’s Best Dissertation in Political Psychology Award, Best Article in Political Behavior Award, Paul Lazarsfeld Best Paper Award, Wilson Carey McWilliams Best Paper Award; International Communication Association’s Kaid-Sanders Best Political Communication Article Award; the International Society of Political Psychology’s Roberta Sigel Early Career Scholar Paper Award.  

Her work has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Political Behavior, Political Psychology, International Organization, Research & Politics, and Quarterly Journal of Political Science.

Dr. Johar received the Distinguished Alumnus award from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, in 2019 and the Service to the Doctoral Program Award from Columbia Business School in 2023. She served as the Vice Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion from 2019 to 2021, Senior Vice Dean from 2011 to 2014, and Vice Dean for Research from 2010 to 2011. At the university, Dr. Johar served as Chair of the Faculty Steering Committee for the Columbia Global Centers | South Asia in Mumbai from 2015 to 2019 and currently serves on the Provost’s Advisory Council for the Enhancement of Faculty Diversity. 

Dr. Johar served as President of the Society for Consumer Psychology from 2023-2024 and as co-editor of the premier academic journal on consumer behavior, the Journal of Consumer Research from July 2014 to December 2017. Dr. Johar's expertise lies in consumer psychology, focusing on consumer identity, beliefs, motivation, and persuasion as they relate to branding, advertising, and media. Her current research examines consumer interactions with technology, aims to understand and mitigate the effects of misinformation, and studies how to use psychological principles to inspire consumers to combat climate change. Dr. Johar teaches Research Methods to PhD students and electives on design thinking (Innovate using Design Thinking), social innovation (Data Driven Design for Social Innovation), and Global Immersion (India) to MBA and Executive MBA students.

She has been a board member and chair of the governance committee for the American Finance Association, an editor of the Journal of Economic Theory and a frequent keynote speaker at prestigious academic conferences in both finance and economics. Currently, Professor Veldkamp serves on the American Economic Association’s awards committee and co-chairs the program committee for the annual conference of the Society for Financial Studies. Her accomplishments have earned her recognition as a fellow of the Econometric Society, the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory, the Finance Theory Group, the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Centre for Economic and Policy Research. In the public sphere, she is an economic advisor for the New York Federal Reserve and the Bank of International Settlements. 

Professor Veldkamp’s research examines how investors’ or firms’ use of data and AI affect consumers, the macroeconomy, markups, economic measurement and financial valuations. She is an author of two textbooks: Information Choice in Macroeconomics and Finance, and The Data Economy: Tools and Applications (forthcoming), both with Princeton University Press.

She writes on journalism and development, investigative reporting in the global south and has published extensively over the last decade on the media in Africa. More recently she has become focused on solutions to the problem of online disinformation, earning her PHD on the topic from the University of Navarra.  

She is the editor of Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Reporting from Around the World (New Press, 2014) and African Muckraking: 75 years of Investigative journalism from Africa (Jakana 2017).  She is the editor of Media Capture: How Money, Digital Platforms and Governments Control the News (Columbia University Press 2021)

He teaches Media and Technology Mergers and Acquisitions, The Media and Technology Industries: Public Policy and Business Strategy,  Digital Investing  and co-teaches Sports Economics and Policy with Sunil Gulati. Professor Knee is a Senior Advisor at Evercore. Before joining Evercore as a Senior Managing Director in 2003, Professor Knee was a Managing Director and Co-head of Morgan Stanley's Media Group. 

He was previously Publishing Sector Head in the Communications, Media and Entertainment Group at Goldman Sachs. Prior to becoming an investment banker, he was Director of International Affairs at United Airlines and served as Adjunct Professor of Law at Northwestern University. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post and he is the author of The Platform Delusion (2021), Class Clowns (2017) and The Accidental Investment Banker (2006), and co-author of Curse of the Mogul (2009).

She is the co-author of a wide range of scholarly papers and sole author of two books: Information Security Essentials: A Guide for Reporters, Editors and Newsroom Leaders (Columbia University Press, 2021) and Practical Python: Data Wrangling and Data Quality (O'Reilly, 2021). 

McGregor’s research primarily centers on security and privacy issues in journalism and education. Her NSF-funded projects focus on developing novel tools, interfaces and approaches for improving the privacy, security and robustness of digital information and research; she is also investigating the possibilities of peer support for managing occupational hazards in journalism. As an educator, McGregor is committed to increasing the reach and inclusiveness of data science education. Her research work has received support from the National Science Foundation, the Knight Foundation, Google, multiple schools and offices of Columbia University, and others.

Before joining Columbia, McGregor was the Senior Programmer on the News Graphics team at the Wall Street Journal, a front-end programmer at the photo wire service MediaVast (acquired by Getty Images) and a reporter for The New York Amsterdam News. In addition to her technical and academic work, McGregor enjoys designing creative solutions to technological challenges, which occasionally yields small prototypes and installations. She holds a master’s degree in Educational Communication and Technology from NYU and a bachelor’s degree in Interactive Information Design from Harvard University.