Social Catalyst Lab

We work to identify scalable policies and solutions in the Global South. We experiment with systems that conduct economics research either autonomously, or through human-AI collaboration.


Award

Yrjö Jahnsson Award 2025

David Yanagizawa-Drott has won the Yrjö Jahnsson Award 2025 for his work on political economy and the media.

Read more →

Talks

AI in Recruitment: Evidence, Skill Matching & Workforce Productivity

India AI Impact Summit 2026

Team

David Yanagizawa-Drott
David Yanagizawa-Drott

Research Director and Co-Founder

University of Zurich

Core Team

Urša Krenk
Urša Krenk

Managing Director and Postdoc

Kobbina Awuah
Kobbina Awuah

Co-Founder and Advisor

Michèle Himmelrich
Michèle Himmelrich

Administrative Assistant

Research Staff

Olaf de Rohan Willner
Olaf de Rohan Willner

Predoctoral Fellow

Andrin Pluess
Andrin Pluess

Predoctoral Fellow

Céline Aeschbacher

Céline Aeschbacher

Predoctoral Fellow

Linen Yu

Linen Yu

Predoctoral Fellow

Bohan Bai

Bohan Bai

Predoctoral Fellow

PhD Students

Stine Helmke
Stine Helmke

PhD Candidate

Sara Rabino
Sara Rabino

PhD Candidate

Alumni

Giuliano Ripari/Research Assistant

Navid Samadi/Master Student

Marco Caporaletti/Master Student

Jonas Esterer/Master Student

Nils Rütten/Bachelor Student


Research

Work in Progress

See all research →

Project APE

An open experiment in AI-driven policy evaluation — autonomous systems that generate empirical economics papers and benchmark them against publications from top journals.

Explore Project APE →

Where We Work

Zurich

Switzerland

Main Office

Accra

Ghana

Field Office

Nairobi

Kenya

Field Research Ongoing

Dar es Salaam

Tanzania

Field Research Ongoing


Collaborate

Interested in working with us? Get in touch.

SCL@econ.uzh.ch
University of Zurich
Department of Economics
Schönberggasse 1
CH-8001 Zürich