Head of Research, StateUp

Eszter Czibor is Head of Research at StateUp, a startup focused on digital innovation with public purpose. Her work centres on building the knowledge and ideas infrastructure for Public-Purpose Technology: technology that addresses big public needs, and the public policies, organisations, cultures, investments and business models around it. In this area often surrounded by hype or suspicion, she seeks to collect and generate rigorous evidence based on high-quality data, and make it accessible to all stakeholders and decision makers.

Eszter has extensive experience in applied innovation research. In her former role as Principal Researcher at Nesta’s Innovation Growth Lab, she helped design and support several randomised evaluations of innovation and business support programmes in the UK and across the European Union. She has been advocating for improved collaboration between researchers and policymakers, and better evidence use in policy making, on various forums, including an article in The Atlantic, a discussion at the ESRC Innovators’ Breakfast Club, and an Apolitical workshop attended by hundreds of civil servants from across the globe. She is passionate about making the innovation ecosystem more diverse and inclusive, and has partnered with organisations such as NASA and Nesta Challenges to design and evaluate programmes aimed at broadening participation in innovation.

Eszter has a background in experimental and behavioural economics, with a special interest in designing efficient and inclusive organisations. She has published numerous articles in academic journals, including Management Science, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organizations, Journal of Law, Economics & Organization, and the Economics of Education Review. She holds a PhD in economics from the University of Amsterdam, and worked as a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago. In 2015, she received the prestigious Rubicon award from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).