Member

SHAOFENG ZHENG

Research field:Social Psychology, Cultural Psychology

●What are your current research interests?

How gene and environmental factors (e.g., culture, childhood experience) independently and interactively shape individuals’ empathy and support-seeking

●What do you enjoy most about research?

Writing interesting papers

● What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

Solve problems with a systematic, scientific approach

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

Understanding human nature

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

Create my own theory or research field and inspire others to join me

Kareman Yassin

Research field:Applied Microeconomics and Enviromental Economics

●What are your current research interests?

My current research closely aligns with global efforts for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050

●What do you enjoy most about research?

I enjoy delving deeply into topics that sparks my curiosity with the goal of making contributions that could benefit others in the future.

●What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

Developing a deep and comprehensive understanding of a single topic.

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

My grandfather, a professor of physiology, had a deep love for science and was known for his strong work ethic and unwavering commitment to both his research and his students.

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

To establish collaborations with both the public and private sectors to develop innovative, feasible, and evidence-based policies that bring us closer to achieving the net-zero carbon emission target.

Julia Mariko Jacoby

Research field:Early modern Japanese environmental and economic history

●What are your current research interests?

I currently research the complex natural resource networks of early modern Japanese villages and how they continued into the Meiji period.

●What do you enjoy most about research?

I love to connect with people from the past through reading sources and to connect with colleagues about research.

●What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

Research, for me, is an opportunity to never stop learning.

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

I’ve always been curious and loved analyzing things.

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

I want to be a researcher who brings people together internationally.

Tetsuya Aoki

Research field:platform strategy

●What are your current research interests?

Platform, Marketing, Metaverse

●What do you enjoy most about research?

Finding and Meeting creative people

● What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

Creative exploration

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

Goslings lead the geese to water

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

boundary spanner of academia and industry

Haitao Cheng

Research field:International trade theory

●What are your current research interests?

trade and the environment, border carbon adjustments, carbon pricing

●What do you enjoy most about research?

Develop interesting models, obtain interesting results.

● What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

Research means solving the questions that you cannot answer with Google.

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

Google usually does not work well in answering my questions. So, why not do it by myself?

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

Publish good papers in good journals.

Yuta Kittaka

Research field:Industrial Organization

●What are your current research interests?

Consumer search / platform economics / experimental economics

●What do you enjoy most about research?

そんなもの ウチにはないよ

● What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

紆余曲折

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

紆余曲折

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

師匠のような

Kohei Matsumoto

Research field:My research fields cover the intersection of marketing, strategy, and public policy.

●What are your current research interests?

I am analyzing the relationship between firm competition and innovation. My current research topic includes the competitive response of national brand manufacturers to private labels.

●What do you enjoy most about research?

The most enjoyable moments are when I come up with a new research idea to extend current research findings and share such ideas with my colleagues.

● What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

I would say accumulating research findings.

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

I enjoyed studying firms’ rise and fall at a management strategy seminar as a bachelor’s student, which led me to become a researcher.

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

By analyzing companies, I would like to provide important managerial implications.

Hamza Umer

Research field:Economics

●What are your current research interests?

Lab and Field Experiments, Development Economics, Applied Microeconomics, Islamic Finance, Labor Market

●What do you enjoy most about research?

The opportunity to conduct economic experiments with diverse people and understand unique factors (such as religion) that influence decision-making is the most interesting aspect of my research.

● What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

A systematic analysis of behavior in different contexts.

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

I always enjoyed education and selecting research as a career was a natural choice for me. Along the way, my parents provided me the necessary strength to pursue my interests in research. Correspondingly, several professors have further inspired research interests in me and I hope to emulate their footsteps.

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

At the moment there are three key goals. First, I would like to continue exploring unique factors that influence economic decisions. I believe such a research can enrich our understanding about unexplored aspects of decision-making that can ultimately help in micro-level policies. Second, I would like to continue field research (RCTs & Experiments) in the less developed societies and suggest evidence-based policies for enhancing wellbeing. Third, I would like to collaborate with other researchers and explore the application of economic experiments in the related research fields.

Junichi Kikuchi

Research field:Macroeconomics

●What are your current research interests?

Expectation / Inflation / Consumption / Measurement

●What do you enjoy most about research?

When embarking on new data and/or new projects

● What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

A hobby that never gets boring

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

If I had to choose, I would say the experience of devoting hour after hour in research in my graduate school years.

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

A researcher who is not only enthusiastic in research but also education.

Etienne Makdissi

Research field:Family and Labor Economics

●What are your current research interests?

Marriage Formation and Location Choice

●What do you enjoy most about research?

Satisfying my curiosity

● What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

Improving our understanding of society

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

Desire to explain why society is structured as it is, and to try to find out how to improve it.

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

Better understanding of the relationship between family and socio-economic structures.

Elnura Baiaman kyzy

Research field:Mainly macroeconomics, with a focus on monetary and fiscal policy, uncertainty and, a love for Bayesian estimation

●What are your current research interests?

Currently I am working on stochastic volatility models and nonlinear filters.

●What do you enjoy most about research?

Uncovering new insights and solving both old and new puzzles

● What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

A long journey of exploring new ideas and solutions

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

The amazing women in science!

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

Keep exploring, keep solving, and keep enjoying my job!

Wenjiao Hu

Research field:International economics, monetary economics

●What are your current research interests?

exchange rate linkage with economic variables in developing countries

●What do you enjoy most about research?

I often enjoy the feeling of attention-focusing during research.

● What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

I treat academic research as a way to improve my personal integrity.

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

To save the world.

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

I want to make more contribution to financial stability in international community

Fumi Yoshimoto

Research field:The European Union Law

●What are your current research interests?

The European Parliament election 2024

●What do you enjoy most about research?

Sharing ideas with others

● What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

Accumulation of the results we never know unless we try

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

One thing led to another and I ended up being a researcher.

●What are your future goals as a researcher?

I wish I could become a researcher like my supervisors and the colleagues.

Prasada Rao Emeritus Professor, School of Economics, University of Queensland

Research field:Economics/Econometrics

●What are your current research interests?

Index Number Methods for Spatial and Temporal Comparisons; Comparisons of Prices and Real Incomes; Modelling Income Distributions and Measurement of Global and Regional Inequality and Poverty; Measurement of Efficiency and Productivity

●What do you enjoy most about research?

The challenge of problem solving and providing new insights in my discipline and areas of research.

●What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

Research to me is a way of life, thinking and providing solutions to problems in my discipline. Ability to provide new insights and solutions gives me great joy and satisfaction.

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

I was inspired by my teachers and outstanding scholars who taught me as a student at Indian Statistical Institute.

●Message to young researchers

Enjoy your research and do research for its own sake and not for the sake of publications. Once you enjoy research, other results follow automatically. Doing research is not an occupation and not a 9 am to 5 pm job, it is a 24/7 engagement. Finally, when you are confronted with a problem don’t go and look for solutions in books and papers – try to think about the problem and try to solve it yourself! Good luck and just enjoy!

Maria Lohan Professor, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Queen’s University Belfast (UK)

Research field:Social Science and Health

Professor Maria Lohan is Chair in Social Science and Health and UNESCO Chair in Gender Equality at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Queen’s University Belfast. She is also Distinguished Visiting Professor at Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Studies (HIAS) at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo Japan.
Professor Lohan’s research focuses on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and gender equality.
Within this field Professor Lohan has advanced a focus on engaging men and boys in fostering SRHR for women and girls, as well as for men/boys. She has focussed on achieving this through co-designing, implementing and evaluating relationship and sexuality education (in schools and in prison settings). This work has a multi-country focus in the UK, Ireland, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa. It has included the largest randomised controlled trial ever of a relationship and sexuality education programme and the first trial to include a prospective health economic evaluation.
Professor Lohan works as a consultant to the World Health Organization where she has led systematic reviews of the global evidence on male engagement in SRHR and gender equality. Following compilation of the evidence, Professor Lohan was commissioned by WHO to lead an international team to conduct a global priority setting exercise on ‘Masculinities and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights’. The results were presented to international ministries at the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development in New York 2024.
Professor Lohan also works as a consultant to UNESCO and was commissioned by UNESCO in 2023 to compile an overview of the systematic review evidence on comprehensive sexuality education globally. She is a partner in the UNFPA/UNESCO Global Partnership Forum on Comprehensive Sexuality Education. UNESCO recently published a feature interview with Maria on this work.
Professor Lohan has worked closely with policy makers in the UK and Ireland and convened a ‘Six nations policy makers forum on Relationship and Sexuality Education(RSE)’. She has published widely in high rankings international peer-reviewed journals including the BMJ, The Lancet Public Health. She has led over ten international team studies as principal investigator with research funding gained from the National Institute of Health and Care research, the Medical Research Council and Economic cand Social Research Council, amongst others. She has contributed as a team member to many more. Recently, she co-published with HIAS member Assistant Professor Mizanur Rahman in the Lancet Global Health.
She is keen teacher of graduate students and mentor for early career staff. She looks forward to meeting staff and students at HIAS for the duration of her visiting position in 2024; 2025 and 2026.

●What are your current research interests?

Health and Gender Equality , especially Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) and especially men’s/boys’ engagement in SRHR

●What do you enjoy most about research?

I enjoy engaging with different perspectives and i especially enjoy learning about multi-cultural and interdisciplinary perspectives.

●What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

Finding out what you can, the best way that you can

●What inspired you to become a researcher?

I guess I liked reading and writing – and university life – and I just kept at it. Once you get your PhD, you are qualified, and once you get your first job, you are on your way to a career.

●Message to young researchers

Don’t be afraid of the blank page, it gives you space to start (again).

René Belderbos Full Professor, Faculty of Economics and Business, KU Leuven (Belgium)

Research field:Economics and Strategy of Innovation and Multinational Firms

I am a full professor of Strategy at KU Leuven (Belgium) and part-time professor of International Corporate Strategy at Maastricht University and UNU-MERIT (The Netherlands). My research focuses on innovation strategies and international business strategies of multinational firms.

●What are your current research interests?

Innovation, Intellectual Property Rights, R&D collaboration, Location decisions, Innovative entrepreneurship, Industry-Science linkages

●What do you enjoy most about research?

To be able to follow my curiosity.

●What does research mean to you?(In a nutshell)

Rigor & Relevance
●What inspired you to become a researcher?

My first efforts to do research for my Master thesis.

●Message to young researchers

Collaborate and learn, following your curiosity.