Joshua Blumenstock

Biography

Joshua Blumenstock is a Ph.D. candidate at UC Berkeley’s School of Information, where he does research at the intersection of Economics, Computer Science, and Public Policy.  His primary focus is on understanding the social and economic impacts of information and communication technologies in developing countries.  His recent work has shown how terabyte-scale data collected by mobile operators can be used to better understand the role of mobile phones in the daily lives of individuals and households in East Africa.  

Before starting graduate school, Joshua worked on other very large datasets at Microsoft Research and the Harvard Institutes of Medicine.  He was a founding engineer of HOTorNOT.com, and served as a 2003-2004 Thomas J. Watson Fellow in Africa and Asia. Joshua holds a Master's degree in Economics from UC Berkeley, and Bachelor’s degrees in Physics and Computer Science from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.