Pablo Astudillo-Estévez is a computational social scientist whose expertise centers on the analysis of economic and human spatial dynamics. Currently, he is a Professor at the School of Economics at Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) and serves as the Director of the USFQ Data Hub. He is also an Associate Researcher at the Institute of New Economic Thinking at the University of Oxford and holds a Doctorate in Economic Geography and Economics of Complexity from the same institution.

Pablo’s previous roles include being a researcher at the Growth Lab at Harvard University (United States) and a visiting fellow at the MIT Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (United States). His experience extends to serving as a data scientist in the Finance, Competitiveness, and Innovation Global Practice at the World Bank-IBRD. Furthermore, he has consulted for the Inter-American Development Bank and provided advice to governments and the private sector on building

foundations to leverage technology and data for solving complex challenges. His consultancy work spans several countries, including Japan, South Korea, and Romania.

His primary academic interest revolves around understanding the evolution of economies, specifically how they learn and discover methods to unleash their potential for creating knowledge and innovating through data analysis. More specifically, Pablo analyzes extensive data sets to study the dynamics of economic landscapes that enable regions to foster innovation and ascend the technology ladder. He has a special interest in understanding the structures of production networks through granular data analysis.