Heidi Williams is the Director of Science Policy at the Institute for Progress and the Charles R. Schwab Professor of Economics at Stanford University.
Heidi's teaching and research focus on how society can best support science and innovation, and how we can best ensure that science and innovation generate broad benefits to society.
Complementing her role at IFP is her role as Co-Chair (with Paul Niehaus) of J-PAL’s new Science for Progress Initiative. She is also the Editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives and is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) where she is co-director (with Amy Finkelstein) of the Health Care program as well as co-director (with Ben Jones) of the Innovation Policy working group.
Heidi received her AB in mathematics from Dartmouth College in 2003, her MSc in development economics from Oxford University in 2004, and her PhD in economics from Harvard in 2010. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2015), and has been recognized for her undergraduate teaching, graduate teaching, and graduate advising.
