Elisabeth C. Paulson

Elisabeth is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School. She teaches the first year course on Technology and Operations Management in the required curriculum.

Elisabeth’s research focuses on data-driven policy making and the design of interventions for social good. Drawing on tools from optimization, machine learning, mathematical modeling, and statistics, her work aims to develop new analytical methods that have impact in the public and non-profit sectors. Through her focus on intervention design, Elisabeth’s research addresses broader topics related to fairness, personalization/targeting, and explainability.

Elisabeth’s work to date is primarily in the domains of food and immigration policy. Her food policy work focuses on interventions for creating better access to, and consumption of, fresh food. Her work on immigration policy centers around the data-driven geographic assignment of refugees and asylum seekers. Elisabeth believes in partnership-oriented research, and much of her work to date is motivated by, and in collaboration with, NGOs and government entities.

Prior to joining HBS, Elisabeth was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford University, where she remains a Faculty Affiliate.  She received her PhD in Operations Research from MIT in 2021, supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Elisabeth received her B.S. in Math, B.S. in Statistics, and M.A. in Math from the Pennsylvania State University. 

For more information, please visit:
https://elisabethpaulson.github.io/