Summary
I am a theoretical physicist passionate about complexity, in all its forms, graphic, photography and (good) food. Actually, good food likely falls within the complexity dimension: a good dish is for sure something more than the mere sum of its ingredients!
What do I (like to) do? Leveraging (hidden) information from (complex but not necessarily Big) data - I prefer to call them Smart Data as size marginally matters - and eventually providing meaning and value to them.
Where did I start? Economics. I wanted to establish an effective bridge between the complexity theory and economic one in order to provide a more effective ground for economic practice: a 'more' scientific and 'more' data-driven economic thinking to design better economic policies and eventually deliver better societal wealth.
In the last years, my interests are also focused on how these research activities may ground strategic consultancy especially for the definition of long term financial investment strategies and for the design of quantitative macroeconomic scenarios to support decision-making processes.
Since few months, I started to study the other side of any modern economic system, the financial system. I hope to understand the linkage between the two sides, intellectually, this represents my goal in the next years.
I was involved in collaboration projects or I acted as a consultant for several companies (Boston Consulting Group, Royal Dutch Shell, Pangea Formazione, IPPR, Azimut, Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, IFC-World Bank Group).
I also co-founded New Economic Metrics BV.
I am currently Research Associate at Capital Fund Management.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.
(Aristotle)
Experience
Capital Fund Management
Research Associate July 2017 - present
International Finance Corporation
Consultant Dec 2016 - June 2017
NewEconomicMetrics
Co-founder Sept. 2015 - present
NewEconomicMetrics offer a novel and data-driven perspective on the fitness and development expectations of national economies. We provide ad-hoc quantitative studies with in-depth focus on GDP growth and industrial sectors for institutional investors, country risk analysts and policy makers.
Using proprietary machine-learning tools, NewEconomicMetrics analyse patterns in the export data, to provide a quantitative measure of the fitness of an economy and the complexity of each of its products.
Data driven analysis on economic fitness, GDP growth and product network structure are provided to clients such as risk managers, financial institutions and corporate strategists. Clients include BCG, Shell and Alibaba.
ISC-CNR Institute of Complex Systems, Rome
Post Doc Researcher Jan 2012 - Aug 2016
CentraleSupélec, Paris
Visiting Researcher Nov 2015 - Aug 2016
Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
External Consultant Aug 2015 - Nov 2015
Industrial development and economic growth scenarios for ASEAN
countries and assessment of potential synergies with the Italian industrial systems.
Azimut
External Consultant Jun 2015 - present
Royal Dutch Shell
External Consultant Sep 2014 - Jan 2015
Collaboration with the Boston Consulting Group
External Collaborator Jun 2013 - Sep 2013
Pangea Formazione
External Consultant Mar 2012 - Jul 2012
Teaching activities
Collaboration in the teaching activity of the course of Complex System (Master's Degree), Sapienza University, Rome 2009-2015
Sapienza, University of Rome
Ph. D. Student at Dep. of Physics Nov 2008 - Oct 2011
Skills and Specialties
I have an extensive background in complexity theory and data modeling, statistical analyses, algorithm development for financial (financial markets modeling and time series analysis) and economic systems (quantitative macro-economic scenarios) and web-data. In addition, I am interested and experienced in data-visualization. I am also familiar with web-analytics.
My researches and personal interests on topics bridging different disciplines (Physics, Mathematics, Economics, Finance, Social phenomena) have often led me to develop and adopt “hacking” or non-standard approaches in several contexts. I have a strong expertise in problem identification and problem solving, a wide vision combined with the ability of focusing on the key driving elements of a scenario/problem/analysis.
RESEARCH SPECIALTIES: Data analysis and modeling, Data mining and Big Data analysis, Data visualization, Data-driven metrics, Agent-based modeling, Complex systems, Economic Complexity, Economic pathways of development, Macro economic scenarios
Language
English (Fluent), French (Mother Tongue), Italian (Mother Tongue)
Physics
Complexity, Statistical Physics, Probability
Economics
Economic Complexity, Growth, Pathways of Development, Industrialization, Innovation, Macro economic scenarios
Finance
Modeling, Order Book dynamics, Time series analysis, Market coherence, Risk, Agent-Based Modeling
Big Data & Data Mining
Forecasting tools from web-queries, Trade data, Data-driven metrics, Machine learning
Word Processing & e-publishing
Microsoft Office, iWork, OpenOffice, LaTeX, iBooks Author
Data Viz & Image Editing & Webdesign
Illustrator, Photoshop, Camera Raw, Omnigraffle, Gephi,several Python packages, Infogr.am
Freeway Pro
Machine Language & OS
Python (+ several statistical, mathematical and visualization packages), C, C++(basic), Perl (very basic), shell scripting (basic)
OS: Unix Environment (Mac OS X and Ubuntu), Windows
Education
Sapienza, University of Rome
Physics, Master’s Degree 2006 - 2008
Sapienza, University of Rome
Physics, Bachelor's Degree 2003 - 2006
110 /110 cum laude
Final Mark: 110 /110 cum laude
“Why did nobody notice it?”
(Queen Elisabeth II, London School of Economics, November 2008)
Projects
I am or have been involved in the research activities of the following project
GROWTHCOM
Growth and Innovation Policy-Modeling - Applying next generation tools, Data, and Economic Ideas
Time span: 2013-2016
Keywords: Economic Complexity; Big Data; Bipartite Network; New Metrics; Measuring intangibles; Non monetary variables; Industrial competitiveness; Technological evolution; Evolvability; E-commerce ecology
CRISIS LAB.
Analytics for Crisis Prediction and Management
Time span: 2012-2015
Keywords: Economic Complexity; Industrial competitiveness; Firm growth; Technological evolution; Smart Cities, Science of Science, Network Analysis, Risk
FOC
Forecasting Financial Crises
Time span: 2010-2014
Keywords: Financial Crisis, Financial networks, Risk, Credit network
Research Highlights & Media Coverage
THE HETEROGENEOUS DYNAMICS OF ECONOMIC COMPLEXITY
Abstract: Recent results of a new branch—Economic Complexity—have set the basis for a framework to approach such a challenge and to provide new perspectives to cast economic prediction into the conceptual scheme of forecasting the evolution of a dynamical system as in the case of weather dynamics. A recently introduced non-monetary metrics for country competitiveness (fitness) allows for quantifying the hidden growth potential of countries by the means of the comparison of this measure for intangible assets with monetary figures, such as GDP per capita. This comparison defines the fitness-income plane where we observe that country dynamics presents strongly heterogeneous patterns of evolution. The flow in some zones is found to be laminar while in others a chaotic behavior is instead observed. These two regimes correspond to very different predictability features for the evolution of countries: in the former regime, we find strong predictable pattern while the latter scenario exhibits a very low predictability. In such a framework, regressions, the usual tool used in economics, are no more the appropriate strategy to deal with such a heterogeneous scenario and new concepts, borrowed from dynamical systems theory, are mandatory. We therefore propose a data-driven method—the selective predictability scheme—in which we adopt a strategy similar to the methods of analogues, firstly introduced by Lorenz, to assess future evolution of countries.
Scientific paper: M. Cristelli, A. Tacchella, L. Pietronero, The Heterogeneous Dynamics of Economic Complexity, PLoS ONE 10(2): e0117174. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0117174
Media coverage: Nature Magazine, EU Commission, Il Fatto Quotidiano, Tom's Hardware, Corriere della Sera, Radio Rai 2, L'Espresso
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Press coverage of research activities in which I am involved as one of the principal investigators
Summary of My Main Research Activities
The main areas of my research activity fall in the following fields
Economic systems
Analysis of country import and export flows. Development of tools to evaluate the competitiveness of countries and the complexity of products. Development of forecasting analysis tools and quantitative macro economic scenarios for country growth, economic sectors, and portfolio allocation.
Financial systems
Financial market modeling (agent-based models), self-organization of markets, quantitative analysis of specific technical trading techniques, development of tools for assessment of systemic risk.
Web-data analysis
Analysis of web-data as proxies to develop forecasting tools for social, economic and financial indicators such as market activity (in collaboration with Yahoo! Research Lab.), touristic flows and phone usage.
Publications
HIGHLIGHTS
M. Cristelli, A. Tacchella, L. Pietronero
PLoS ONE 10(2): e0117174. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0117174 (2015)
M. Cristelli, A. Tacchella, A. Gabrielli, G. Caldarelli, L. Pietronero
PLoS ONE 8(8):e70726.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0070726 (2013)
R. Di Clemente, M. Cristelli, A. Tacchella, G. Chiarotti, L. Pietronero
PLoS ONE 9(11): e112525. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0112525 (2014)
Publication list
[R] Referred papers
[U] Conference proceedings and unreferred papers
[B] Chapter of books and books
[WP] Working paper
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
Theses
Honors & Awards
Ph. D. thesis awarded and published by Springer in Springer Theses Series
Complexity in Financial Markets Springer These (2014)
Winner of a three-year Ph. D. fellowship in Physics at Department of Physics, Sapienza Università di Roma (October 2008)
Award for the achievement of the Master’s Degree, ‘Mario Negri’ Foundation (2010)
#visualtasting
This is the corner in which you can have a peek into my visual passions. In analogy to my love for tasting new cuisines, I like to define myself as a #visualtaster. When I go around, my thoughts are guided by whatever moves my eyes and sometimes, when I want to share them, I freeze them in a shot.
This website is a ticket free collection of photo exhibitions, so just follow your dream about what you see.
It is the place where I can exhibit my visual experiments.
This is a project I am currently working on. It is about visiting cities, photos and much more! Stay tuned!
© 2016 Matthieu Cristelli - All rights reserved