Research Statement 2026-2029

My research focuses on the design, governance, and operation of digital markets that enable trust, reduce the cost of public infrastructure, and promote social, digital, and financial inclusion. Over the past decade, I have combined academic inquiry with real-world market creation, resulting in two foundational technologies that anchor my research agenda: the HAT Microserver, which I invented to enable self-custody of personal data, and the Dataswyft Wallet, which I subsequently developed to enable data portability and participation across digital ecosystems.

At the core of my research is the question:

How can digital market design embed trust, agency, and inclusion directly into market infrastructure, particularly where traditional institutional mechanisms are costly or ineffective?

My work contributes to scholarship by treating digital infrastructure as a research instrument—one that allows markets to be designed, governed, observed, and refined in real-world conditions, enabling theory development grounded in practice.

My research agenda is organized around four interrelated themes:

• Market Design for Trust-Based Digital Ecosystems. 
I extend classical market design theory to environments where trust must be embedded into infrastructure rather than enforced through centralized institutions. This includes the study of rules, incentives, and governance mechanisms encoded in digital systems.

• Digital Markets and Inclusion. 
I examine how digital market architectures can lower barriers to participation for underserved populations—particularly smallholder farmers, informal workers, and SMEs—by reducing transaction costs and institutional dependency.

• Data as an Economic Asset under Self-Custody
. My work investigates how data becomes a productive economic asset when individuals retain custody and agency, enabling non-extractive models of value creation and exchange.

• Digital Markets as Substitutes for Public Infrastructure. 
A central contribution of my research is demonstrating how well-designed digital markets can substitute for or complement public infrastructure functions—such as identity, traceability, coordination, and access to finance—at lower cost and greater resilience.