My Lab

My lab is a wonderful group of students and researchers that I work with, some of whom I’m an advisor for. And although economists don’t usually have labs in the way that a neuroscientist does, we still try to promote a sense of group camaraderie – for example through lab events!

Interested in Joining the Lab

Design

-Skills that make an applicant stronger include:

Interest in innovation
Knowledge of machine learning, computer science, electrical engineering
Empirical analysis skills (statistics or econometrics)
Facility with programming (e.g. R, SQL, Python, etc.)

I am currently looking for graduate students interested in working on the following topics:

Trends in Computing: Analysis of where computer progress has come from and how it can be provided in the future (e.g. analysis of computer hardware, algorithms, alternate types of computing (quantum, optical))
Economics of Machine Learning: Which techniques are important and why? What impacts will machine learning have for industry? Public policy? Sustainability?

Interested applicants should send me an email at neil_t@mit.edu.

Previous Lab Events

lab lab Spring 2016 – Movie characters: Michael Wahlen, Sam Zyontz, Daniel Rock, Caroline Fry, Guillaume St. Jacques, Neil Thompson lab Fall 2015 – Back to the 80s: Neil Thompson, Ankur Chavda, Sam Zyontz, and Caroline Fry lab Spring 2015: Jeff Kuhn, Sam Zyontz, Neil Thompson, Caroline Fry and Amn Rahman

Current Lab Members:

Emily Liu

Emily Liu

Emily is a Masters of Engineering student at MIT, where she was also an undergrad, and is completing a concentration in theoretical computer science. She is working on tracking algorithm optimality over time, as part of an effort to quantify progress in the field of computer science. Her non-academic interests include playing music with others, reading, and baking.

Fangwen Xia

Fangwen Xia

Fangwen is a second-year student at Wellesley College, majoring in data science.

Gabriel Filipe

Gabriel Filipe

Gabriel is a Software Engineering undergraduate at University of Brasília , Brazil. In partnership with the Ministry of Planning, he participated on research projects focused on public services digitization with the ITRAC group. He also works voluntarily during one year as a production and quality management tutor at University of Brasília. His research interests center around machine learning challenges and data analysis.

Nicholas Borge

Nicholas Borge

Nick is a Masters Student with MIT’s System Design and Engineering Management program. Prior to MIT he was a management consultant for 11 years, a startup founder, and then Director of Intelligent Automation and Analytics at Sony Music. Nick’s primary interest is the future of work, and is focused on product development and technology roadmapping for AI enabled productivity tools.

Nicholas Emery

Nicholas Emery

Nicholas is a Ph.D. student in political science at UCLA. His research focuses on the political economy of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, including measuring research progress and the geopolitical implications of international competition in AI development. He has also done work on the political economy of development in the postcommunist region. He received a BA in economics and Russian from the University of Pennsylvania.

Nur Ahmed

Nur Ahmed

Nur Ahmed is a strategy PhD candidate at Ivey Business School. He is broadly interested in innovation and industry evolution. Nur’s current work includes economics of innovation in AI, which explores the role of compute in AI research. In his dissertation, he is examining how firms are responding to the technological change known as deep learning by changing their R&D collaboration and research disclosure strategies. He tends to use the latest methods (e.g., synthetic control method) from the causal inference and NLP literature to test his hypotheses.

Nur has a master’s degree in public policy from Central European University and an engineering degree in Computer Science from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.

Rebecca Wenjing

Rebecca Wenjing

Rebecca Wenjing Lyu is a postdoctoral fellow at the MIT Sloan School of Management and at the Initiative on the Digital Economy, MIT. Rebecca’s research focuses on the role of AI, big data, and cloud computing in innovation of firms. Another stream of research of Rebecca’s work is evaluating the contribution of immigrants (entrepreneurs, scientist, etc.) as well as their mobility. Rebecca received her Ph.D. from Tsinghua University (Business Administration).

Shuning Ge

Shuning Ge

Shuning is the Senior Data Research Coordinator at the Perelman center for political science and economics, and has a masters in Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

Sukwoong Choi

Sukwoong Choi

Sukwoong Choi is a postdoctoral associate at the MIT Sloan School’s Initiative on the Digital Economy. His main interests are innovation and entrepreneurship. Sukwoong’s current studies include the economics of AI, especially how AI affects human decision-making, human knowledge, and the labor market. Before joining this lab, he was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Southern California and the University of Kentucky. Sukwoong received his Ph.D. from KAIST College of Business. During his Ph.D., Sukwoong was a visiting Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley.

Tamay Besiroglu

Tamay Besiroglu

Tamay works on the economics of computing with an aim to develop insights about the future of AI. Previously, he led strategy for Metaculus, consulted for the UK Government, interned at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, and Bloomberg. Tamay received an MPhil in Economics from the University of Cambridge in 2020.

Wensu Li

Wensu Li

Wensu received her Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut. She is now a visiting professor at Trinity College.

Xueyun Luo

Xueyun Luo

Xueyun is a graduate student at Cornell’s SC Johnson College of Business.

Yash Sherry

Yash Sherry

Yash Sherry is a Computer Science undergraduate at IIIT-Delhi, India. Currently, he is working as a Research Affiliate at MIT Sloan School of Management. His work focuses on tracking improvements in algorithms and their impact on the economy of IT firms. Prior to this , Yash has worked with Stanford and CMU on research projects. He has also worked as a member/intern with Mozilla , Microsoft , Irisys Korea and Cube 26. He holds several national awards and recognitions.

Alumni:

Aparna Pande

Aparna Pande

Amn Rahman

Amn Rahman

Caroline Fry

Caroline Fry

Daniel Rock

Daniel Rock

Davide Cannito

Davide Cannito

Guillaume Saint-Jacques

Guillaume Saint-Jacques

Jeff Kuhn

Jeff Kuhn

Lucy Hu

Lucy Hu

Michael Wahlen

Michael Wahlen

Mike Teodorescu

Mike Teodorescu

Nicholas Fazzari

Nicholas Fazzari

Philipp Pfingstag

Philipp Pfingstag

Raghav Puri

Raghav Puri

Sarah Jaballah

Sarah Jaballah

Sam Zyontz

Sam Zyontz

Svenja Spanuth

Svenja Spanuth