Senior Advisor
Jul 2026 – Present
J-PAL (Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab), MIT
- Advise J-PAL's AI portfolio across research, policy, and practice, working on the Project on AI and Evidence (PAIE).
- PAIE identifies, evaluates, and scales innovative applications of AI for social good and in the fight against poverty, bringing together AI adopters, tech companies, and researchers.
Founder, Social Capital Lab
Mar 2026 – Present
Social Capital Lab (independent)
- Continue to lead the Social Capital Lab as an independent effort following its time at Meta, studying how social connection shapes economic opportunity and well-being.
- Maintain and extend the public social capital and social connectedness datasets used by researchers and policymakers worldwide.
Founder, Social Capital Lab
Apr 2020 – Mar 2026
Meta
- Founded and led a social science research group partnering with academics, nonprofits, and NGOs to study how social networks impact economic opportunity and well-being.
- Built and released the Social Connectedness Index (with NYU), now a widely-used public dataset for researchers studying migration, trade, COVID-19, and inequality.
Founder and Manager, Political Science Research Team
Jan 2018 – Apr 2020
Meta
- Founded a team of research scientists and computational social scientists studying the impact of social media on elections, migration, well-being, and economic mobility.
- Established partnerships with external academic institutions and NGOs to create public policy solutions to reduce misinformation on social media.
Founder and Manager, News Feed Science Team
Jun 2016 – Jan 2018
Meta
- Co-created and led a team of research scientists and engineers studying long-term dynamics within the News Feed ecosystem and implications for recommender systems.
- Built some of the first fake-news detection algorithms, launched in production in 2016.
Founder and Manager, Economics Research Team
Jan 2014 – Jun 2016
Meta
- Founded Facebook's first economics team: a multidisciplinary group of PhDs, researchers, and engineers focused on advertising marketplace modeling, auction theory, pricing, and revenue forecasting.
- Built tools and methodology for financial and behavioral modeling adopted across the company.