Double Ph.D Pablo Azar Appointed As Chief Economist

By Rishma Banerjee

Algorand, a crypto platform based in Boston, and known for solving the “blockchain trilemma” to provide decentralization, scalability and security. As per reports they are now appointing Pablo Azar as Chief Economist who will be guiding Algorand’s economic policies.

Azar has a double Ph.D. from MIT and will be bringing his own brand of talent and expertise with regards to the knowledge of computer science and cryptography in order to develop a better system. Announced shortly after the appointments of Steve Kokinos and W. Sean Ford as CEO and COO, respectively, Mr. Azar’s appointment shows an effort on the part Algorand to further develop their executive team. Azar will be in charge of increasing the visibility of the company’s economic policies and the improving the tools that developers require to build on the Algorand platform.

Kokinos said:

“As momentum around tokenization increases, so does the need for sound economic management…With his deep background in economics and computer science, Pablo will ensure our community has economic policies and tools necessary for businesses to build on our foundational platform.”

Algorand provides the foundation for existing businesses and new projects to function on an international sphere and their first-of-its-kind, permissionless, pure proof-of-stake protocol supports the scale, open participation, and transaction finality required to build systems for billions of users.

As the economy is racing towards a more and more digital, transparent, and borderless reality, businesses must embrace technology that supports decentralization to both remain strategically relevant and to successfully be a part of this new decentralized world. Pablo said:

“Algorand’s main goal is to build a blockchain that adds real value to the economy… The kind of research problems being undertaken by Algorand intersect with many subfields of economics. My initial focus is on key issues such as mitigating the risk faced by our users and collaborating with industry partners in order to design new economic applications. I look forward to being part of a team of outstanding academics, engineers, and business experts.”

Before joining Algorand, Azar was working for 10 years on cryptography and macroeconomics, at MIT, including the likes of development of rational interactive proofs, using software engineering metrics to understand the complexity of US Financial regulations, and developing models on the formation of supply chains and their effects on economic growth. His work has actively covered by Bloomberg, The Atlantic, and US News and World Report. He received a B.A. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard, a Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT in 2014, and will receive a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT in 2019.