Ethan Bueno de Mesquita is a leading political scientist whose research applies game theoretic models to the study of conflict, political violence, national security, and electoral politics, he has also written extensively on methodological issues in the social sciences. Under Professor Bueno de Mesquita’s leadership, the Harris School is on the path to become a leading destination for research, teaching, and subject matter expertise in tech policy with a specific emphasis on thorny issues surrounding governance of generative AI.

Professor Dube studies poverty, violence and crime in countries around the world. Recently, in partnership with The University of Chicago Urban Labs Crime Lab, she ran a large-scale experiment with 2000 Chicago police officers, randomizing access to a training program that used simulation consoles to help officers learn to deal better with the cognitive demands associated with complex decision making and information overload. They found that trained officers performed differently in the field: They used force less often, made fewer discretionary arrests, and were less likely to arrest black civilians, while their overall activity levels remained unchanged. Dube is working to scale this research up and to move the training away from simulation consoles into augmented reality or virtual reality.

Ariel Kalil's current research examines the historical evolution of income-based gaps in parenting behavior and children’s cognitive and non-cognitive skills. In addition, at the Behavioral Insights and Parenting Lab, she is leading research on EdTech, with a particular interest in the ways that technology can help parents with low income be more effective in supporting young children's development of math and reading skills.

Joshua Gottlieb is an expert on the economics of the healthcare system, including administrative costs, the geography of healthcare, healthcare labor markets, the organization of insurance markets, and physician behavior. His research spans health, labor, urban, and public economics. 

Wright's research on substate conflict largely focuses on the political economy of insurgent violence, examining how rebel groups adopt new technologies of war to undermine state rivals. He is currently fielding several studies using tech-associated applications to improve development interventions. He is working with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Bank on how to use technology to monitor population movement during conflict. The hope is to evaluate whether and how to scale aid distribution using signals from this platform. He has also worked on a project in Ukraine that used GPS trace data to monitor public responses to government warning systems via an application developed with a Ukrainian tech company. 

Gregory Lane is an Assistant Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. He is a development economist with a current research focus on innovations in finance, technology, and labor markets in developing countries. He, and fellow Harris Public Policy faculty member, Erin Kelley, have fielded a years-long randomized controlled trial on the ways in which tech interventions (in the form of a mobile app) can substantially improve traffic safety in the developing world, in their case by focusing on the behavior of urban minibus drivers in Kenya.

Jacob (Jake) Braun is the Executive Director of the Harris School of Public Policy Cyber Policy Initiative. Mr. Braun previously served as acting Principal Deputy National Cyber Director in the White House from May 2023 to July 2024.  Before that, he was Senior Counselor for Transformation to the Secretary of Homeland Security.  President Joseph Biden appointed Mr. Braun as Senior Advisor to the Department of Homeland Security’s Management Directorate in February 2021. He is also a lecturer at the Harris School of Public Policy. Mr. Braun is the author of Democracy in Danger: How Hackers and Activists Exposed Fatal Flaws in the Election System and has co-authored three award-winning and seminal works on election infrastructure cyber vulnerabilities. He has worked extensively on national security and finance issues throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.