Weiyi Ng

I believe that technology changes how people live and work, but that its benefits and detriments are not distributed equally; our demographics and societal standing determine who gets access to new technologies, how they are appropriated, and where the gains actually land.

I came to this view through my work as a computational physicist in defense science, and subsequently as a data scientist at Bloomberg Beta, Bloomberg's venture capital arm, where I led the Future Founders project, building predictive models to identify startup founders before entrepreneurial entry. The progress of science, I realised, is highly dependent on the social structures around it: the people, policies and politics — the same forces that then determine who benefits. This led me to my interests and pursuits in computational social science.

Currently, I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Strategy and Policy at NUS Business School. My research falls at the intersection of large-scale data analysis, careers and entrepreneurship, with my main line of work examining the careers of technology and knowledge workers through the lens of computational sociology. My current work investigates how technological shifts such as Blockchain and AI reshape careers and the labor market. My work has been published in academic outlets like Organization Science and Strategic Management Journal, and has been featured by media outlets like CNA, the Straits Times, the Edge, TechCrunch and the New York Times.

At NUS, I teach Venture Capital and Entrepreneurial Management. I also advise the NUS Business School's Venture Capital Investing Competition (VCIC) MBA team, and I am a founding advisor of two startups: Omcom and Curated Culture.

I hold a PhD from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, and undergraduate degrees in physics and in the history and philosophy of science from the University of Chicago.