Dr. Kono teaches in the Kyoto University Faculty of Economics, Graduate School of Economics, and International Graduate Programme for East Asia Sustainable Economic Development Studies. His work deals with various issues of economic development and poverty based on microeconomic theory, econometrics, and statistical methods including contract design of microcredit and insurance schemes, designing health and education programs for the poor, remittance, intra-household decision making, market frictions in agricultural trade, and misallocation of resources.

Ilya Chernyakhovskiy is the project lead and co-author for USAID’s Greening the Grid platform under the USAID-NREL partnership. He leads grid integration analysis and capacity building efforts in Central Asia countries, including Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, under USAID/Central Asia’s Power the Future program. Ilya is also part of the core modeling team for NREL’s grid integration studies in India. Prior to joining NREL, Ilya was a researcher in economic development at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. He holds an M.Sc.

Dr. Seik Kim is an Associate Professor from the Department of Economics at Korea University. He obtained his Doctorate and Masters degree in Economics from Yale University, and graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor's degree in Economics from Seoul University. He served as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics of Korea University from 2013 to 2014, and at the University of Washington from 2007 to 2013. He sits in the Editorial Board of the Korean Economic Review since 2016.