Audience Tools

Specializations

  • Data Science
  • Information Economics
  • Technology for Developing Regions

Biography

Please visit http://www.jblumenstock.com for current information

Joshua Blumenstock is an Assistant Professor at the U.C. Berkeley School of Information. His research develops theory and methods for the analysis of large-scale behavioral data, with a focus on how such data can be used to better understand poverty and economic development. Recent projects combine field experiments with big spatiotemporal network data to model decision-making in poor and conflict-affected regions of the world. Prior to joining Berkeley, Joshua was on the faculty at the University of Washington, where he founded and co-directed the Data Science and Analytics Lab. He is a recipient of the Intel Faculty Early Career Honor, a Gates Millenium Grand Challenge award, a Google Faculty Research Award, and a former fellow of the Thomas J. Watson Foundation and the Harvard Institutes of Medicine.

Education

  • Ph D, School of Information, University of California, Berkeley, 2012
  • MA, Economics, University of California, Berkeley, 2010
  • BA, Computer Science with high honors, Wesleyan University, 2003
  • BA, Physics with high honors, Wesleyan University, 2003

Awards

  • Millenium Grand Challenge Award - Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 2015
  • Most Impactful Post of 2015 - NextBillion, 2015
  • Google Faculty Research Award - Google, 2014
  • Community Award - USENIX Networked Systems Design and Implementation, 2013

Consulting and Other Projects

  • LIRNEasia (NGO), Sri Lanka, 2015
  • International Finance Corporation (NGO), 2014

Publications and Contributions

Presentations

  • A Society of Silent Separation: The Impact of Migration on Ethnic Segregation in Estonia (2014)
    Population Association of America Annual Conference - Boston, MA
  • Big Data for Development (2014)
    International Telecommunications Union Telecom World 2014 - Doha, Qatar
  • Development Engineering (2014)
    Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley - Berkeley, CA
  • International Experiences: Leveraging Big Data for Development in the Global South (2014)
    Big Data for Development: Responsible Use of Mobile Meta-data to Support Public Purposes, LIRNEAsia - Colombo, Sri Lanka
  • Probabilistic Inference of Unknown Locations: Exploiting Collective Behavior when Individual Data is Scarce (2014)
    ACM-DEV - San Jose, CA
  • Risk Sharing and Mobile Phones (2014)
    Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - Seattle, WA
  • Violence & Financial Decisions: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial of Mobile Money in Afghanistan (2014)
    Design Use Build seminar, University of Washington - Seattle, WA
  • Violence and Financial Decisions: Evidence from Mobile Money in Afghanistan (2014)
    Northeast Universities Development Consortium Annual Conference, Boston University - Boston, MA
  • Violence and Financial Decisions: Evidence from Mobile Money in Afghanistan (2014)
    Information School, University of Maryland - College Park, MD
  • A different type of ?Data Science?? Terabyte-Scale Data and the Social Impact of Technology (2013)
    Medio Corporation - Seattle, WA
  • A different type of ?Data Science?? Terabyte-Scale Data and the Social Impact of Technology (2013)
    Starbucks Corporation - Seattle, WA
  • Behavioral Economics and Large-Scale Data Mining (2013)
    Intel Corporation - Hillsboro, OR
  • Behavioral Economics and Large-Scale Data Mining (2013)
    Microsoft Research New England - Cambridge, MA
  • Big Data & Development: Empirical Research in Rwanda and Afghanistan (2013)
    Change Seminar, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington - Seattle, WA
  • Data Science and Social Change: Research and Perspective (2013)
    AIMS seminar, Information School, University of Washington - Seattle, WA
  • Data Science and Social Welfare (2013)
    The 6th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD '13), Workshop on Big Data and Development - Cape Town, South Africa
  • Expanding Rural Cellular Networks and Virtual Coverage (2013)
    10th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation - Lombard, IL
  • How do Labor Markets Equilibriate? (2013)
    8th IZA/World Bank Conference on Employment and Development - Bonn, Germany
  • Migration and Ethnic Segregation: Evidence from Estonia's Mobile Phone Logs (2013)
    Third Annual Conference on the Analysis of Mobile Phone Datasets, NetMob - Cambridge, MA
  • Motives for Phone-Based Giving: Departmental Colloquium (2013)
    Department of Economics, University of Washington - Seattle, WA
  • Operationalizing Outlier Detection in Community Health Programs (2013)
    The 6th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD '13) - Cape Town, South Africa
  • Risk Sharing and Social Networks in Rwanda (2013)
    CSE Departmental Seminar, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington - Seattle, WA
  • Social and Spatial Ethnic Segregation: A Framework for Analyzing Segregation With Large-Scale Spatial Network Data (2013)
    The 4th Annual ACM Symposium on Computing for Development (DEV '13) - Cape Town, South Africa
  • Societal-Scale Data Analysis in Developing Countries (2013)
    Microsoft Faculty Summit - Redmond, WA
  • Using Mobile Communications Data to Measure Conflict (2013)
    Annual Meeting, American Political Science Association - Chicago, IL
  • Big Data & International Development: Measuring Impact and Behavior (2012)
    Gates Foundation - Seattle, WA
  • Charity and Reciprocity in Mobile Phone-Based Giving (2012)
    Advanced Technology Labs, Sprint - Redwood City, CA
  • Consumer Bias and Inconsistency in Contract Choice (2012)
    Advanced Technology Labs, Sprint - Redwood City, CA