Omar I. Asensio is an Associate Professor in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy and the Director of the Data Science & Policy Lab at Georgia Tech. During the 2023-2024 academic year, he was a fellow at the Institute for Business in Global Society at Harvard Business School. Professor Asensio’s research focuses on climate and electrification strategies at the intersection of technology, AI, and sustainability. He employs large-scale data, field experiments, and human-in-the-loop AI systems to address innovation challenges in energy systems, transportation, and human mobility. He contributed to the zero emission vehicles (ZEV) policy guidance for COP26 and the Glasgow Climate Pact.

Prof. Asensio is a member of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) New Voices 2021 cohort, which recognizes early- to-mid career leaders for exceptional contributions to science, engineering and medicine. He is a two-time former chair of the Natural Resource, Energy, and Environmental Policy section of APPAM, and is the recipient of the 2023 Faculty Excellence in Research Award from the Ivan Allen College. At Georgia Tech, he is a Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS) Fellow and a faculty affiliate of the Institute for Data Engineering & Science (IDEaS), the Machine Learning Center, and the Strategic Energy Institute (SEI).

Professor Asensio has received multiple awards for his research, including the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability (ARCS) Emerging Scholar Award, and the Research Impact on Practice Award (RIPA) from the Academy of Management’s Organizations & the Natural Environment Division (ONE-NBS). His work has been published in leading journals such as Nature Energy, Nature Sustainability, and PNAS. 

Professor Asensio’s research and teaching have been supported by awards from the National Science Foundation, Microsoft, ESRI, the U.S. State Department’s Diplomacy Lab, and the U.S. Department of Energy. His work has informed policy advisory communications for the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the UK government, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and the IndiaAI initiative. His research has been featured in popular press, including Bloomberg, Scientific American, Motor Trend, Fast Company, NPR’s All Things Considered, Yahoo! News, The Huffington Post, and the Washington Post.

Dr. Asensio serves as Associate Editor of Data & Policy journal published by Cambridge University Press. He earned his doctorate in Environmental Science & Engineering with specialties in Economics from UCLA.

Paige Clayton is an Assistant Professor in the School of City and Regional Planning at Georgia Tech. She is also affiliated with the CREATE Economic Development Research Center at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School’s Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. Dr. Clayton joined Georgia Tech in 2020 after completing her Ph.D. in Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a concentration on entrepreneurship and innovation, regional economic development, and science and technology policy. At the University of North Carolina, Dr. Clayton received the Nancy W. Stegman Fellowship and the Dissertation Completion Fellowship. During her PhD, she held visiting positions at SKEMA Business School (Sophia Antipolis, France) and at UCLA’s Department of Geography. 

Dr. Clayton’s research focuses on regional patterns of economic development and how entrepreneurship and innovation influence local economies. Key themes include entrepreneurial support organizations, social network analysis, entrepreneurial ecosystems, university technology transfer, research & development, and institutions, and the connections between these factors which help support local entrepreneurship and innovation. Her research has been published in Research Policy, Industrial & Corporate Change, Academy of Management Perspectives, the Journal of Technology Transfer, Industrial Labor & Relations Review, International Regional Science Review, and the Oxford Handbook on Entrepreneurship and Collaboration, among others. 

Paige is an alumna of Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy and a native Atlantan.

Dr. Yu Ding is the Anderson-Interface Chair and Professor in the H. Milton School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. Prior to joining Georgia Tech in 2023, he was the Mike and Sugar Barnes Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University. While at Texas A&M, he also served as Associate Department Head for Graduate Affairs of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering between 2012 and 2016 and Associate Director for Research Engagement of Texas A&M Institute of Data Science between 2020 and 2023. He received his B.S. in Precision Engineering from the University of Science and technology of China in 1993, a M.S. in Precision Engineering from Tsinghua University in 1996, a second M.S. in Mechanical from Penn State in 1998, and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2001.

Dr. Ding is the author of the CRC Press book, Data Science for Wind Energy, and a co-author of the Springer Nature book, Data Science for Nano Image Analysis. Dr. Ding received the 2019 IISE Technical Innovation Award and 2022 INFORMS Impact Prize for his data science innovations impacting wind energy applications. Dr. Ding is a Fellow of IISE (2015) and ASME (2016). He has served as editor or associate editor for several major engineering data science journals, and is currently serving as the 14th Editor in Chief of IISE Transactions, for the term of 2021-2024.