Mohammad Akbarpour Named a 2020 Sloan Research Fellow

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Mohammad Akbarpour, Assistant Professor of Economics. | David Elliot

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation selected Mohammad Akbarpour, assistant professor of economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business, as a recipient of a 2020 Sloan Research Fellowship in the field of economics.

The fellowships honor early-career scholars whose “creativity, leadership, and independent research achievements make them some of the most promising researchers working today,” according to the press release issued by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Past fellows have gone on to become leaders in their respective fields: 50 have received a Nobel Prize, 17 have won the Fields Medal in mathematics, 69 have received the National Medal of Science, and 19 have won the John Bates Clark Medal in economics.

“We’re thrilled that Mohammad was selected as a 2020 Sloan Research Fellow,” said Jonathan Levin, Philip H. Knight Professor and dean of Stanford GSB. “His contributions to the GSB and the field of economics are significant, and I look forward to seeing his career progress.”

Akbarpour is the Philip F. Maritz Faculty Scholar for 2019–2020 at Stanford GSB and an assistant professor of computer science, by courtesy, at Stanford School of Engineering. His research bridges computer science and economic theory and is focused on market design, redistributive mechanisms, and network theory. He studies the role of inequality in market design, and the design of kidney exchange marketplaces and school choice systems. Recently, Akbarpour has worked on problems related to corruption in auctions and how to construct and employ mobility-based network data for designing optimal lockdown policies during a pandemic.

Akbarpour is one of only eight scholars to receive the fellowship in economics this year. He is among 10 Stanford recipients and 126 U.S. and Canadian researchers in 2020 who will receive a two-year, $75,000 fellowship to further their research.

Open to scholars in eight scientific and technical fields, including economics, the Sloan Research Fellowships are chosen in coordination with the academic community. Nearly 1,000 researchers are nominated each year by their fellow scholars, and the recipients are chosen by an independent panel of senior scholars in each field based on a candidate’s research accomplishments, creativity, and potential to become a leader in his or her field.