Bangladeshi-born Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, a professor of economics at the US’ Yale University, has been named to Vox’s inaugural Future Perfect 50 list.
The list, published on Thursday by Vox, an American news and opinion website owned by Vox Media, recognizes scientists, thinkers, scholars, writers and activists building a more perfect future.
Mobarak was honoured in the “fighting global poverty and injustice” category.
In case the @voxdotcom #FuturePerfect50 List gets me 5 minutes of attention today, I'd like to share a small thought that even good, smart people in the West need to hear, so that we can all be better at doing good. https://t.co/GGfvidjS01
— Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak (@mushfiq_econ) October 20, 2022
Mobarak is a development economist with a focus on encouraging the adoption of beneficial technologies and behaviours in the developing world.
He is also the founder of the Yale Research Initiative on Innovation and Scale (Y-Rise).
Elated by the inclusion in the list, Mobarak said: “This was nice. If I ever wanted to be on a list, it would be on this one: ‘People who embody the question: How do we make the future a better place for everyone?’”
His profile on the Yale University website reads: “Mobarak has several ongoing research projects in Bangladesh, Nepal and Sierra Leone. He conducts field experiments exploring ways to induce people in developing countries to adopt technologies or behaviours that are likely to be welfare-improving. He also examines the complexities of scaling up development interventions that are proven effective in such trials.
“Mobarak is collaborating with the government of Bangladesh and other local institutions to devise evidence-based Covid-19 response strategies. He collaborated with governments and NGOs in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh to distribute facemasks to over 100 million people based on the results of the NORM model.”