Susan Athey is the Economics of Technology Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business. She received her bachelor’s degree from Duke University and her PhD from Stanford, and she holds an honorary doctorate from Duke University. She previously taught at the economics departments at MIT, Stanford, and Harvard. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Science, and is the recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded by the American Economics Association to the economist under 40 who has made the greatest contributions to thought and knowledge. Her current research focuses on the economics of digitization, marketplace design, and the intersection of econometrics and machine learning. She has worked on several application areas, including timber auctions, internet search, online advertising, the news media, and the application of digital technology to social impact applications. As one of the first “tech economists,” she served as consulting chief economist for Microsoft Corporation for six years, and now serves on the boards of Expedia, Lending Club, Rover, Turo, and Ripple, as well as non-profit Innovations for Poverty Action. She also serves as a long-term advisor to the British Columbia Ministry of Forests, helping architect and implement their auction-based pricing system. She is the founding director of the Golub Capital Social Impact Lab at Stanford GSB, and associate director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.

Pulak GHOSH is currently a faculty of Decision Sciences and Center of Public Policy of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB). He also holds the IIMB Chair Professor of Excellence. Prof. Ghosh serves as a Distinguished fellow at Niti Aayog (Govt of India’s highest policy making body), member of National statistics Commission, Member of AI committee for Govt of India, and consults corporates and Govt. on various issues of emerging technology (including AI, Big Data, fintech, digital, Industry 4.0) and finance, economics.

Before joining IIMB in 2009, he was a faculty at Georgia State University, and Emory Univ, USA.

His main research and teaching interest are in the interface of economics and emerging technologies and how and why corporates and policy makers should strategize to embrace it for better growth. Disruptive innovation, digital platform and emerging technologies like AI, Fintech etc. are changing the way corporates will do business. Prof. Ghosh works in this space. Pulak has published over 70 research articles in internationally reputed journals.

Prof. Ghosh was in the Advisory group member of Big data at the United Nations (UN) Global Pulse, a big data initiative by UN. He is a member of the prestigious Karnataka Knowledge Commission and Chairman of the big data initiative. He was a senior advisor of McKinsey Global for big data, analytics and emerging technologies. He serves in the National AI task force set up by govt of India. He serves in the advisory board of various organizations, and also member of various national and international committees on economics, big data, AI and fintech. He has been named as one of the top 5 data scientists in the world (of Indian origin) by Techradar in 2017.