Known for his contributions to economic complexity, data visualization, and applied artificial intelligence
Chile
France
Cesar A. Hidalgo is a Chilean-Spanish-American scholar known for his contributions to economic complexity and his applied work on data visualization and artificial intelligence. Hidalgo is a tenured professor at the Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the head of the Center for Collective Learning, a multidisciplinary research laboratory with offices at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAST) at TSE and the Corvinus Institute of Advanced Studies (CIAS) at the Corvinus University of Budapest. He is also an Honorary Professor at the Alliance Manchester Business School of the University of Manchester.
Besides his teaching career, Cesar Hidalgo is also the co-founder of Datawheel. The company specialises in digital transformation solutions for both governments and large companies. He is well known for pioneering the specific field of economic complexity and creating several data visualization and distribution platforms. Amongst these are Pantheon, Immersion, DataViva, DataAfrica, DataUSA, DataChile, and Immersion.
Cesar Hidalgo has been the recipient of numerous awards and accolades. One is the Lagrange Prize in Complex Systems, which he received in 2018. This is the highest prize given in the field of complex systems, and it can be given to a scholar who is under the age of 50. Other awards and accolades include the Bicentennial Medal of Science, the Indigo Design Award, The Webby Award for the best government and civil innovation site, nominated one of the Twenty Most Influential Latinos in Technology, and the Technological Person of the Year in 2015.
Regarding his education, Cesar Hidalgo studied Physics at Universidad Catolica de Chile, obtaining his PhD in Physics in 2008 from The University of Notre Dame. He joined MIT after two years at Harvard as a postdoc. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2014 and is the director of the MIT Media Lab’s Collective Learning Group.
Hidalgo’s contributions have been recognized with numerous awards, including the 2018 Lagrange Prize and three Webby Awards. Hidalgo is also the author of dozens of peer-reviewed papers and of three books: Why Information Grows (Basic Books, 2015), The Atlas of Economic Complexity (MIT Press, 2014), and How Humans Judge Machines (MIT Press, 2021)
Cesar Hidalgo has written numerous academic papers that have been published in accredited journals. He is also an accomplished author. In his book ‘Why Information Grows’, The Financial Times review reads “, Hidalgo has boldly attempted to synthesise a large body of cutting-edge work into a readable, slender volume. This is the future of growth theory, and his thought-provoking book deserves to be widely read.”
His next book, The Infinite Alphabet (Penguin-Random House, 2025), is scheduled for the summer of 2025.
Regarding speaking, Cesar Hidalgo is passionate, intense, and eloquent. His mastery in his field comes to the fore, leaving his audiences with great takeaways and ideas for implementation. He is a contribution of AI to the development of society.
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