Shomu Banerjee
Applied Microeconomic Theorist
“As a theorist of decentralized systems, I see Healthy as a living example of mechanism design—built not just to function, but to create better outcomes where traditional markets fail. Like Aikido, it can be flexible, principled, and centered in purpose: a decentralized system designed not just for control, but for care.”
I am a Teaching Professor of Economics at Emory University for over 20 years. My research interests are in applied microeconomic theory, game theory, industrial organization, and experimental economics. I received my PhD from the University of Minnesota where I studied under Leonid Hurwicz, the 2007 Nobel award recipient who pioneered the field of mechanism design. Mechanism design studies the possibility of constructing decentralized institutions when markets fail (or do not exist) with the goal of bringing about outcomes that are socially desirable. So when Chalinda, one of my advisees at Georgia Tech, approached me about collaborating with the team at Healthy, I was quite intrigued! I view Healthy along with its inter-connecting blocks as an attempt to design a sustainable mechanism to achieve better health outcomes by leveraging various aspects of block-chain technology.
Born to Indian parents in London, UK, I grew up in India, Pakistan, Madagascar, and finished my high school in Turkey. After spending the next five years studying economics at the University of Delhi, I came to the US to obtain my doctorate and have spent my entire adult life here. For the past 17 years, I have been a summer-time resident of Seoul, South Korea, while teaching at Korea University. I consider myself to be a global citizen, being both homeless and at home in the world!
I love languages and read, write, and speak five (English, Hindi, Bengali, French, and Turkish); in recent years, I have taken a year of Korean and Persian each, and am currently learning Spanish. Being non-religious, I derive my spiritual center from the Japanese martial art of Aikido in which I hold a third-degree black belt. I have practiced the art for over three decades and taught it to children for 14 years.
