Our team
Project Leaders
RAY DUCH
RAY DUCH
Ray Duch is a Professor at Nuffield College University of Oxford. He has founded and directed the Centre for Experimental Social Sciences (CESS) at Nuffield College; and spearheaded and directed similar centers in Chile, China, and India. He co-directs the Candour Project and is a co-PI for the Nuffield Department of Population Health REAL Demand Centre. Ray Duch directs the Talking to Machine project that leverages advances in Large Language Models to enhance social science research including the design and implementation of experiments and how we conduct public-opinion research. His research focuses on the application of experimental methods to understanding individual decision making related to politics, finance, health, and economics. His publications have appeared in leading social science journals including, American Political Science Review, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, American Journal of Political Science, Political Analysis, Applied Economics, Journal of Politics, and Nature Medicine. Ray Duch holds a visiting appointment at IAST-Toulouse School of Economics and has had visiting appointments at Stanford Graduate School of Business, WZB-Berlin, Université de Montréal, and Pompeo-Fabra University, Barcelona. His research is supported by leading social science funding agencies including the NSF, ESRC, FONDECYT, Swiss National Science Foundation, the Health Foundation and SSHRC. He serves on the scientific advisory boards of education institutions and funding bodies; he also frequently advises governments, international organizations, law firms and corporations.
Contact: raymond.duch@rduch
SONJA VOGT
SONJA VOGT
Sonja is an associate professor in the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Lausanne. She uses lab and field experiments to examine the social and psychological mechanisms practitioners can use to tackle societal and environmental challenges related to public health, education, climate change, and land degradation. Much of her research is in collaboration with UN agencies and local NGOs in Sudan, Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, India, and Armenia.
Sonja is affiliated with Nuffield College and the Centre for Experimental Social Sciences at the University of Oxford, as well as the Centre for Development and Environment at the University of Bern.
Sonja has published in journals such as Nature, Science, Nature Human Behavior, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, and disciplinary journals in Psychology, Economics, and Biology.
Contact: sonja.vogt@unil.ch
Researchers
Akshay Moorthy
Postdoctoral Researcher
AKSHAY MOORTHY
Postdoctoral Researcher, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Lausanne.
Email: akshayarun.moorthy@unil.ch
Website: https://www.akshaymoorthy.net
HUI ZHANG
PhD student in Economics
HUI ZHANG
Hui Zhang is a PhD student in economics, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Lausanne. Hui received an MA in Economics from the University of Zürich. Her research interests cover experimental economics, the evolution of social norms, social networks, and machine learning
Email: hui.zhang@unil.ch
LOW CHING NAM RAYMOND
Post-doctoral Project Engineer
LOW CHING NAM RAYMOND
Prior to this role, Raymond served as a data science team lead, driving digital transformation in Singapore’s government services through the delivery of various data science and machine learning projects. Before that, he worked as an algorithm engineer at Southeast Asia’s leading E-commerce company, focusing on optimizing autocomplete and ranking systems for the company’s internal map search service.
Raymond holds a PhD in Engineering Systems and Design from the Singapore University of Technology and Design and a Bachelor of Engineering in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the National University of Singapore. He also holds AWS certifications in Solution Architect Associate and Machine Learning Specialty.
His research interests span a wide range of topics, including Natural Language Processing (NLP), full-stack web development, Large Language Models (LLMs), and Generative AI.
PIOTR KOTLARZ
Data Scientist
PIOTR KOTLARZ
Piotr is a post-doctoral researcher in Data Science, working with Professor Ray Duch on the Oxford REAL Demand Center, CANDOUR and IPA research projects.
Piotr holds a PhD degree with distinction in Business Economics from the University of Liechtenstein and he received his Master’s degree in Quantitative Finance and Bachelor’s degree in Business, Economics and Social Sciences from the Vienna University of Economics and Business.
He previously worked at the European Central Bank, Zurich University of Applied Sciences and Vienna University of Economics and Business.
His research interests cover Econometrics, Statistics, Machine Learning, Experimental Methods and Political Science.