Stanford celebrates Susan Athey

 This  from Stanford Report:

What motivates Susan Athey. The economist weighs in on incremental innovation, data-driven impact, and how economics is evolving to include a healthy dose of engineering. 

"Today, Athey, the Economics of Technology Professor at Stanford GSB, is using her expertise to promote the public good. In 2019, she founded the Golub Capital Social Impact Lab, which uses digital technology and social science research to improve the effectiveness of social sector organizations.

...

"For more than a decade, Athey’s professional passions have been linked to their potential for impact. She chose to return to Stanford — after six years teaching at Harvard — because of the opportunity for cross-disciplinary collaboration. And she has helped make such collaboration possible. In 2019, she was a founding associate director of the Stanford University Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Institute. She is also a leader of the Business and Beneficial Technology pillar within Stanford GSB’s newly launched Business, Government, & Society Initiative, which brings together academics, practitioners, and policymakers to address issues such as technology, free markets, and sustainability.

"Athey’s Golub Capital Social Impact Lab epitomizes interdisciplinary work, putting students from computer science, engineering, education, and economics backgrounds to work helping partner organizations leverage digital tools and expertise that are generally only available to — or affordable for — large technology companies.

“I like building things that demonstrate how a class of problems can be solved,” Athey says. “If there is a problem worth solving, and I can solve it myself in a particular case, I know there are other people like me who are going to encounter the same problem. Part of the motivation and theory of change of the lab is that we will solve particular problems for particular social-impact organizations but also create the research that will guide others in solving similar problems.”

...

"Athey says some parts of economics are evolving to include a healthy dose of engineering. In the Microsoft Research interview, she described stereotypical economics research as evaluating existing programs and often finding that “stuff doesn’t work.”

“There’s a lot of negativity,” she says. With help from data and machine learning techniques, “my prediction is that economists are going to become more [like] engineers. Instead of complaining that nothing works, we’re going to start building things that do work to achieve economic outcomes…. We’re going to realize that nothing works if it’s one size fits all, but that a lot of things work if they are actually personalized and appropriately delivered.”