Stefaan Verhulst

Stefaan Verhulst is a Research Professor at the Center for Urban Science and Progress in the Tandon School of Engineering at New York University, where he contributes to initiatives bridging data science and urban progress. As Co-Founder and Chief Research and Development Officer of The Governance Lab at NYU, he leads efforts to transform governance and decision-making through data, technology, and collective intelligence. He is also Co-Founder and Principal Scientific Advisor of The DataTank in Brussels, emphasizing innovative data reuse for societal benefit. In editorial and leadership capacities, Verhulst serves as Editor-in-Chief of the open-access journal Data & Policy from Cambridge University Press and as Research Director of the MacArthur Research Network on Opening Governance. He chairs the Data for Children Collaborative with UNICEF, participates in the European Commission's High-Level Expert Group on Business-to-Government Data Sharing and Eurostat's Expert Group on Private Sector Data for Official Statistics, and contributes to the UNESCO Information Ethics Working Group. Additional affiliations include researcher at the ISI Foundation, member of SMIT at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and Senior Advisor to the Markle Foundation, following over a decade as its Chief of Research.

Verhulst's distinguished career includes serving as UNESCO Chairholder in Communications Law and Policy at Oxford University, where he co-founded and headed the Program in Comparative Media Law and Policy at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies and held a Socio-Legal Fellowship at Wolfson College. He has taught at the London School of Economics and co-founded the International Media and Info-Comms Policy and Law Studies at the University of Glasgow School of Law. A prolific scholar, he has authored seven books and published articles in Harvard Business Review, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Project Syndicate, Wall Street Journal, and The Conversation. His insights have shaped policies at organizations such as the World Bank, European Commission, World Economic Forum, UNICEF, OECD, and UNDP. In 2018, Apolitical named him one of the 10 most influential academics in digital government. Verhulst delivers keynotes at TED, Collision, and the UN World Data Forum and develops data stewardship courses on LinkedIn Learning.