SPEAKER BIOS NETWORKS AND CONNECTIVITY TOOLS: APPLYING A NEW UNDERSTANDING TO INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS MAY 21 ST 9:30am-10:20am - Keynote speaker Alessandro Vespignani, Sternberg Distinguished Professor of Physics, Northeastern University, Advances in networks studies and its implication for international development Alessandro Vespignani is a Sternberg Distinguished University Professor at Northeastern University in Boston, where he leads the Laboratory for the Modelling of Biological and Sociotechnical Systems. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, member of the Academy of Europe, and a fellow of the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences at Harvard University. He is also serving in the board/leadership of a variety of journals and the Institute for Scientific Interchange Foundation. He is president-elect of the Complex Systems Society. Mr. Vespignani s research focuses on the interdisciplinary application of statistical and numerical simulation methods in the analysis of epidemic phenomena and the study of biological, social and technological networks. 10:45am-12:30pm - Panel 1: Transport networks Ben Shepherd, Principal, Developing Trade Ltd, An air transport connectivity indicator and its applications Ben Shepherd, the Principal of Developing Trade Consultants Ltd., is a trade economist and international development consultant. He has worked on a wide range of trade and development issues with organizations such as the World Bank, the OECD, the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations, and the FAO. He specializes in providing policy-relevant research, as well as capacity-building seminars for researchers working in trade and development. He has published more than a dozen articles in peer-reviewed journals, and a
similar number of book chapters. Ben s particular areas of expertise include trade facilitation, transport, and infrastructure; governance, institutions, and anti-corruption; product standards, technical barriers to trade (TBT), and sanitary/phyto-sanitary measures (SPS); trade in services, and the GATS. His most recent academic appointment was as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University s Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from France s leading public policy school, the Institut d Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po). He has also completed graduate studies at Cambridge University in the UK, and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Jan Hoffman, Chief Trade Facilitation Section, UNCTAD, Liner shipping connectivity indicator and its applications Jan Hoffmann has worked as a trade facilitation, port and shipping specialist with UNCTAD s Trade Logistics Branch since 2003, and currently as Chief of the Trade Facilitation Section. He is in charge of the organization s trade facilitation program, various teaching engagements, the Review of Maritime Transport, and the Liner Shipping Connectivity Index. Jan co-edits UNCTAD s Transport Newsletter and IAME-News, and is a member of the editorial boards of Maritime Policy and Management, Maritime Economics and Logistics, and the International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics. Previously, he spent six years with the United Nations ECLAC in Santiago de Chile, and two years with the IMO in London and in Santiago de Chile. Prior to that, he held part time positions as assistant professor, import-export agent, translator, consultant and seafarer for a shipping company. Jan has studied in Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain, and holds a doctorate degree in Economics from the University of Hamburg. Charles Moret, Managing Director, Oceo Trade, Networks in the shipping industry Educated as Captain and Chief Engineer, Mr. Moret has dedicated his career to the shipping industry. After a few years at sea, he stopped navigating to create a ship-owning entity and worked with ships management, fleet and operation management. Later he became General Manager of network design, responsible for the global deployment of Maersk Line ships, strategic planning and assets investments. He was deeply involved in the takeover of PONL by Maersk Line, merging the network, calculating the synergies, and coordinating the cutover. Mr. Moret also developed the first strategic planning liner network optimization application, determining the most optimal set of volumes and revenues matching the network having the lowest cost. Mr. Moret held senior leadership positions as Managing Director of several countries for Maersk Line, growing the business by empowering organizations to deliver through continuous
improvements. He is a partner at CTI consultancy and also the founder of Oceo Trade and Oceo Talent, an independent consultancy company focused on improving the performance of shipping and providing recruitment services to the industry. 2:00pm-3:15pm - Panel 2: Networks in Finance and Banking Serafín Martínez Jaramillo, Senior Financial Researcher, Banco de México, Financial contagion extending the exposures network of the Mexican financial system Serafín Martínez-Jaramillo is a senior financial researcher at the financial stability general directorate of Banco de México. He currently works on financial stability, systemic risk and financial networks at Banco de México, but he also works on bankruptcy prediction using evolutionary computation techniques. He previously developed an agent-based financial market to study the link between agent behavior and the stylized facts in the financial market prices. Mr. Jaramillo has published several book chapters, encyclopedia entries and papers in international journals. He holds an MSc in Computer Science and a PhD in Computational Finance from the University of Essex. He has belonged to the Mexican National Researchers System since 2009. Camelia Minoiu, Economist, Research Department, IMF, Channels of Crisis Transmission in the Global Banking Network Camelia Minoiu is an Economist at the International Monetary Fund where she currently works in the Research Department. Her research is in the area of international economics and finance, with a focus on empirical banking and financial networks. She received her master s degree in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics from the London School of Economics in 2001 and her PhD in Economics from Columbia University in 2007. Tomohiro Ota, Markets, Sectors and Interlinkages Division, Bank of England, Marginal contagion: a new approach to systemic credit risk Tomohiro Ota is currently working as an economist at the Markets, Sectors and Interlinkages Division at the Bank of England. His responsibilities involve analyses of systemic risks, analyses of macro-financial linkage, analysis of interaction between monetary and prudential policies and development of quantitative models of banking systems. He previously worked at Goldman Sachs as an Associate Economist and at the Bankers Trust Asia Securities as a Marketer and Assistant trader in the Capital Market team. He holds a PhD and an MSc in Economics from the University of Warwick, and a BA in Policy Management from Keio University.
3:30pm-5:00pm - Panel 3: Networks in trade and urban/regional science Giorgio Fagiolo, Associate Professor of Economics, Sant Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy, Networks and international trade: stocktaking and future agenda Giorgio Fagiolo is associate professor of economics at the Sant Anna School of Advanced Studies (Pisa, Italy), where he holds a tenured position in the Institute of Economics. His main areas of scientific interest include complex networks, agent-based computational economics, evolutionary games, industrial dynamics, and economic methodology (with particular emphasis on the scientific status of agent-based computational economics; empirical validation of economic models; and their policy-related implications). His papers have been published in several peer-reviewed book chapters as well as in, among others, Science, Journal of Economic Geography, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of Economics Dynamics and Control, Computational Economics, Physical Review E, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Industrial and Corporate Change, Advances in Complex Systems, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, European Physical Journal B, Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination. More information on his scientific and teaching activity can be found at http://www.lem.sssup.it/fagiolo/welcome.html. Forhad Shilpi, Senior Economist, Development Research Group, World Bank, Networks in regional and urban science and some applications Forhad Shilpi is a Senior Economist in the Development Research Group (Agriculture and Rural Development Team) at the World Bank. Her current research focuses on the impacts of infrastructure and communication on rural-urban transformation, domestic market institutions role in the transmission of international price signals, and inter-generational mobility in developing countries. She holds a Ph.D. degree in economics from the Johns Hopkins University. Francesca Medda, UCL QASER Lab, University College London, Integrated Africa city-port investment: modeling with limited data Francesca Romana Medda is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Applied Economics and Finance at the University College London (UCL). She has been the Director of the UCL QASER (Quantitative and Applied Spatial Economics Research) Laboratory since 2010. In 2012 she was appointed economic adviser at the UK Ministry of Environment and Agriculture (Defra) and at the Ministry of Finance (Her Majesty s Treasury). Her research focuses on project finance, financial engineering and efficiency evaluation. Her work has been published in leading academic and practitioner journals. She has been an advisor to the European Investment Bank, the World Bank, UNESCO, UN-Habitat, and UITP. She holds several grants, two of which pertain to the application of complexity analysis in the real world, as well as the 6.2M EPSRC Programme Grant Liveable Cities and the 5.8M Grant New Business for Infrastructure Investments. She
is a member of two EU networks of excellence: NEARCTIS and COMPLEXITY-Net under EU FP7. Since 2007 she has been a member of the Executive Board of Directors of one of the major public transport companies in Italy.