Faculty Director

Christian Catalini

Founder, MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab and Research Scientist, MIT Sloan School of Management

Catalini's main areas of interest are the economics of digitization, entrepreneurship, and science. His research focuses on blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, and the economics of equity crowdfunding and start-up growth. Catalini is one of the principal investigators of the MIT Digital Currencies Research Study, which gave MIT undergraduate students access to Bitcoin in the fall of 2014. He is also part of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and the Digital Currency Initiative; and was previously the Theodore T. Miller Career Development Professor at MIT; and Associate Professor of Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management at the MIT Sloan School. He holds a PhD from the University of Toronto (Rotman School of Management), and an MSc (summa cum laude) in economics and management of new technologies from Bocconi University, Milan. In 2009-10, he was a visiting student at Harvard University.

His work has been featured in Nature, Science, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, WIRED, NPR, Forbes, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post among others. He has presented his research at a variety of institutions including Harvard University, Stanford University, MIT, the Wharton School, Yale University, London Business School, New York University, UC Berkeley, the Federal Reserve Bank, the SEC, the U.S. Treasury, the U.S. Department of Defense, the World Bank, and the White House OSTP.