Emmanuel Letouzé

Dr. Emmanuel Letouzé is the Director and Co-Founder of Data-Pop Alliance, established in 2013 in collaboration with MIT Media Lab, the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and ODI. The organization focuses on using data and AI to promote human development, humanitarian action, and democracy. He also co-founded the OPAL project and serves as an Adjunct Faculty member at Columbia University and Sciences Po Paris.

Previously, Dr. Letouzé was a Marie Curie Fellow at the University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona and an Economist for the United Nations in New York and the French government in Vietnam. In 2012, he authored the UN’s “Big Data for Development” White Paper and has since written and spoken extensively on the role of data, technology, and AI in driving social change.

Under the alias “Manu,” Letouzé also works as a political and editorial cartoonist, blending social commentary with artistry. He is a member of the Cartoon Movement, an online platform bringing together professional editorial cartoonists from around the world.

Dr. Letouzé holds a BA in Political Science and Economics, an MA in Economic Demography from Sciences Po, an MA in International Development from Columbia University as a Fulbright Fellow, and a PhD in Demography from UC Berkeley, followed by a postdoctoral position at MIT.

Publications

AI for the SDGs—and Beyond: Towards a Human AI Culture for Development and Democracy (2023). Emmanuel Letouzé, Nuria Oliver, Bruno Lepri, and Patrick Vinck. Book Chapter in UNESCO-MILA Book on “Missing Link in AI Governance”. Read more. 

Accurate Intercensal Estimates of Energy Access to Track Sustainable Development Goal 7 (2022). Neeti Pokhriyal, Emmanuel Letouzé, and Soroush Vosoughi. Read more. 

Parallel Worlds: Revealing the Inequity of Access to Urban Spaces in Mexico City Through Mobility Data (2022). Emmanuel Letouzé, Zinnya del Villar, Rodrigo Lara Molina, Berenice Fernandez Nieto, Guillermo Romero, Julie Ricard, Diego Vazquez, and Laura Arely Centeno Maya; et al. MIT Press. Read more.

Trust, Regulation, and Human-in-the-Loop AI (2022). Stuart Middleton, Emmanuel Letouzé, Ali Hossaini, and Adriane Chapman. Communications of the ACM. Read more. 

Analyzing the Effect of Time in Migration Measurement Using Georeferenced Digital Trace Data (2021). Lee Fiorio, Emilio Zagheni, Guy Abel, Johnathan Hill, Gabriel Pestre, Emmanuel Letouzé, and Jixuan Cai. Read more.

“Policy Paper: Using Data to Fight COVID-19 – And Build Back Better” (2020). Vodafone Institute. Emmanuel Letouzé, Nuria Oliver, Maria Antonia Bravo, Natalie Shoup. Read more.

“Mobile phone data for informing public health actions across the COVID-19 pandemic life cycle” (2020). Nuria Oliver, Bruno Lepri, Harald Sterly, Renauld Lambiotte, Sébastien Deletaille, Marco De Nadai, Bruno Lepri, Emmanuel Letouzé, Albert Ali Salah, Richard Benjamins, Ciro Catturo, Vittoria Colizza, Nicolas de Cordes, Sam Fraiberger, Till Koebe, Sune Lehmann, Juan Murillo, Alex “Sandy” Pentland, Phuong Pham, Frederic Pivetta, Jari Saramaki, Samuel V. Scarpino, Michele Tizzoni, Stefaan Verhulst, Patrick Vinck. Read more.

“Study for the assessment of DEVCO work in digitalisation in Sub-Saharan Africa” (2020). ADE. Emmanuel Letouzé, Patrick Vinck, Tatiana Goetghebuer, Katia Duhamel, Julie Ricard, Konstantin Gruev, Romain Fourmy, Maria Antonia Bravo, Andrés Lozano. Read more.

“Socio-economic, built environment, and mobility conditions associated with crime: A study of multiple cities” (2020). Marco De Nadai, Yanyan Xu, Emmanuel Letouzé, Marta C. González, Bruno Lepri. Read more.

“Definición de la estrategia de Big Data para el estado colombiano y para el desarrollo de la industria de Big Data en Colombia” (2020). Maria Antonia Bravo, Andres Lozano, Valentina Casasbuenas, Emmanuel Letouzé. Read more.

“Mobile phone data and COVID-19: Missing an opportunity?” (2020). Nuria Oliver, Emmanuel Letouzé, Harald Sterly, Sébastien Delataille, Marco De Nadai, Bruno Lepri, Renaud Lambiotte, Richard Benjamins, Ciro Cattuto, Vittoria Colizza, Nicolas de Cordes, Samuel P. Fraiberger, Till Koebe, Sune Lehmann, Juan Murillo, Alex “Sandy” Pentland, Phuong Pham, Frédéric Pivetta, Albert Ali Salah, Jari Saramäki, Samuel V. Scarpino, Michele Tizzoni, Stefaan Verhulst, Patrick Vinck. Read more.

“Diagnóstico de la situación actual de Colombia estructurado alrededor de las seis dimensiones” (2019). Emmanuel Letouzé, Alex Pentland, Isabella Loaiza, Julie Ricard, Andrés Clavijo, Nicolas de Ligny, Daniel Rodríguez, Orlando Saavedra, Luisa García y Mónica Moreno. Read more.

“Recomendaciones e insumos para la definición de una estrategia nacional de Big Data” (2019). Emmanuel Letouzé, Alex Pentland, Isabella Loaiza, Julie Ricard, Andrés Clavijo, Diego Silva. Read more.

“Propuesta de plan de implementación de la estrategia de Big Data para el Estado” (2019). Emmanuel Letouzé, Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Isabella Loaiza, Maria Antonia Bravo, Valentina Casasbuenas y Gonzalo Araujo. Read more.

“Impacto económico y social de la implementación de la estrategia” (2019). Maria Antonia Bravo, Andrés Lozano, Valentina Casasbuenas, Emmanuel Letouzé, Irving Wladawsky-Berger y Alex “Sandy” Pentland. Read more.

“The ABCDE of Big Data: Assessing Biases in Call-Detail Records for Development Estimates” (2019). Gabriel Pestre, Emmanuel Letouzé, Emilio Zagheni. Read more.

“Sharing is Caring: Four Key Requirements for Sustainable Private Data Sharing and Use for Public Good” (2019). Emmanuel Letouzé, Nuria Oliver. Read more.

“Women in the gig economy: Paid work, care and flexibility in Kenya and South Africa” (2019). Emma Samman, Emmanuel Letouzé, Nuria Oliver. Read more.

“Harnessing Innovative Data and Technology to Measure Development Effectiveness” (2019). Emmanuel Letouzé, Micol Stock, Francesca De Chiara, Alberto Lizzi, Carlos Mazariego. Read more.

“Evaluación de nuevas herramientas y técnicas del big data para proyectos del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo” (2019). Emmanuel Letouzé, Nicolás de Ligny Tandefelt. Read more.

“Big Data to Address Global Development Challenges – Paper Series” (2019). Bessie Schwarz, Beth Tellman, Jonathan Sullivan, Catherine Kuhn, Richa Mahtta, Bhartendu Pandey, Laura Hammett, Gabriel Pestre, Marco De Nadai, Emmanuel Letouzé, Martha C. González, Bruno Lepri, Sveta Milusheva, Elisabeth zu Erbach-Schoenberg, Linus Bengtsson, Erik Wetter, Andy Tatem, Rodrigo Lara Molina, Alejandro Noriega, Eaman Jahani, Julie Ricard, Alex “Sandy” Pentland. Read more.

“Guide to Mobile Data Analytics in Refugee Scenarios” (2019). Albert Ali Salah, Alex “Sandy” Pentland, Bruno Lepri, Emmanuel Letouzé. Read more.

“Retrouver le sens de la mesure pour de meilleures décisions collectives: vers une intelligence artificielle humaine à l’ère des données (p. 47 à 55)” (2018). Emmanuel Letouzé. Read more.

“Towards a Human Artificial Intelligence for Human Development” (2018). Emmanuel Letouzé, Alex “Sandy” Pentland. Read more.

“On the privacy conscientious use of mobile phone data” (2018). Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, Sébastien Gambs, Vincent Blondel, Geoffrey Canright, Nicolas de Cordes, Sébastien Deletaille, Kenth Engø-Monsen, Manuel Garcia-Herranz, Jake Kendall, Cameron Kerry, Gautier Kring, Emmanuel Letouzé, Miguel Luengo-Oroz, Nuria Oliver, Luc Rocher, Alex Rutherford, Zbigniew Smoreda, Jessica Steele, Erik Wetter, Alex “Sandy” Pentland, Linus Bengtsson. Read more.

“Mobiliser et humaniser la Révolution des Données pour la statistique publique, le développement et la démocratie” (2018). Emmanuel Letouzé. Read more.

“Data for Refugees: The D4R Challenge on Mobility of Syrian Refugees in Turkey” (2018). Albert Ali Salah, Alex “Sandy” Pentland, Bruno Lepri, Emmanuel Letouzé, Patrick Vinck, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, Xiaowen Dong, Ozge Dagdelen. Read more.

“Panorama setorial da Internet. Big Data e desenvolvimento: uma visão geral” (2018). Emmanuel Letouzé. Read more.

“Estado del arte y análisis comparativo de estrategias nacionales de Big Data” (2017). Viviana Cañón, Andrés Clavijo, Luis Godoy, Emmanuel Letouzé, Gabriel Pestre, Julie Ricard. Read more.

“Buenas prácticas sobre cómo los gobiernos pueden implementar una estrategia para estimular el ecosistema de negocios Big Data” (2017). Viviana Cañón, Andrés Clavijo, Luis Godoy, Emmanuel Letouzé, Gabriel Pestre, Julie Ricard. Read more.

“How to use Big Data? Leading experts’ roadmap to data-driven innovation projects” (2017). Emmanuel Letouzé, David Sangokoya. Read more.

“Understanding Patterns of Human Mobility At Different Timescales” (2017). Leo Fiorio, Emilio Zagheni, Guy Abel Johnathan Hill, Gabriel Pestre, Emmanuel Letouzé, Jixuan Cai. Read more.

“Characterizing and analyzing urban dynamics in Bogota” (2017). Marco De Nadai, Emmanuel Letouzé, Marta C. González, Bruno Lepri. Read more.

“Big Data – Predicting and preventing climate-related shocks” (2017). Emmanuel Letouzé, David Sangokoya, Julie Ricard. Read more.

“Fair, Transparent and Accountable Algorithmic Decision-making Processes” (2017). Bruno Lepri, Nuria Oliver, Emmanuel Letouzé, Alex “Sandy” Pentland, Patrick Vinck. Read more.

“Leveraging Algorithms for Positive Disruption: On data, democracy, society and statistics” (2016). Emmanuel Letouzé, David Sangokoya. Read more.

“The Tyranny of Data? The Bright and Dark Sides of Data-Driven Decision-Making for Social Good” (2016). Bruno Lepri, Jacopo Staiano, David Sangokoya, Emmanuel Letouzé, Nuria Oliver. Read more.

“Oportunidades y requerimientos para aprovechar el uso de Big Data para las estadísticas oficiales y los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible en América Latina” (2016). Julia Manske, David Sangokoya, Gabriel Pestre, Emmanuel Letouzé. Read more.

“CDRs & Poverty and Population Analysis – Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal” (2016). Emmanuel Letouzé, Gabriel Pestre, Cyrille Bellier, Thomas Roca, Nicolas de Cordes. Read more.

Book chapter – “The Evaluation of Complex Development Interventions in the Age of Big Data” (2016). Emmanuel Letouzé, Ana Lucía Martinez Arias, Sally Jackson. Read more.

“Applications and Implications of Big Data for Demo-Economic Analysis:The Case of Call-Detail Records” (2016). Emmanuel Letouzé. Read more.

Event Paper – “Big Data and Privacy: Understanding the Possibilities and Pitfalls of the Data Revolution in Germany” (2015). Emmanuel Letouzé, David Sangokoya. Read more.

“Beyond Data Literacy: Reinventing Community Engagement and Empowerment in the Age of Data” 2015. Rahul Bhargava, Erica Deahl, Emmanuel Letouzé, Amanda Noonan, David Sangokoya, Natalie Shoup, Mark Frohardt, William Hoffman, Alex “Sandy” Pentland, Alessia Lefébure. Read more.

“Big Data for Climate Change and Disaster Resilience: Realising the Benefits for Developing Countries” (2015). Jesse Anttila-Hughes, Marion Dumas, Lindsey Jones, Gabriel Pestre, Yue Qui, Marc Levy, Emmanuel Letouzé, Simone Sala, Bessie Schwarz, Natalie Shoup, Elizabeth Tellman, Patrick Vinck. Read more.

“Moves on the Street: Classifying Crime Hotspots Using Aggregated Anonymized Data on People Dynamics” (2015). Andrey Bogomolov, Bruno Lepri, Jacopo Staiano, Emmanuel Letouzé, Nuria Oliver, Alex “Sandy” Pentland, Fabio Pianesi. Read more.

“Group Privacy in the Age of Big Data” (2015). Lanah Kammourieh, Thomas Baar, Jos Berens, Emmanuel Letouzé, Julia Manske, John Palmer, Patrick Vinck, Augustin Chaintreau, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, Natalie Shoup. Read more.

“Big Data and Development: An Overview” (2015). Emmanuel Letouzé. Read more.

“The Law, Politics and Ethics of Cell Phone Data Analytics” (2015). Emmanuel Letouzé, Patrick Vinck. Read more.

“Official Statistics, Big Data, and Human Development” (2015). Johannes Jütting, Emmanuel Letouzé. Read more.

“Big Data & SDGs note for Global Sustainable Development Report” (2015). Emmanuel Letouzé. Read more.

Posts

Post

Data-Pop Alliance’s “OPAL for Humanitarian Action (OPAL4HA)” project was selected by the World Food Programme’s (WFP) Innovation Accelerator as one of four early-stage projects to join its Humanitarian Innovation Accelerator Programme (HIAP), out of 379 applications from 85 countries. The...

Download the “Overview and Outlook 2022-2024” Report 10 Year Anniversary Edition Finding appropriate metrics to summarize a decade of work by and at Data-Pop Alliance is not easy. It could be the number of projects completed (over 100), of our...

LINKS WE LIKE #39 Imagine being able to detect crime hotspots in your city, use facial recognition software to match camera footage from a robbery with a database of images, or even predict the likelihood of a crime (including time...

DISCUSSION PIECE This piece was published with the support and as part of the Data Values Project (#DataValues) launched by the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, of which Data-Pop Alliance is a founding member. Photo: Rawpixel (Shutterstock) What’s the...

DISCUSSION PIECE Piece originally published on DIAL’s website. Last week, the Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) and Data Pop Alliance made public a free online handbook on Mobile Data for Development (MD4D), available here on the DIAL Online Catalog, as a...

Data-Pop Alliance (DPA) is glad to share the main outputs of a year-long collaboration with four UNDP Country Offices in sub-Saharan Africa in the form of four reports titled Impacts and Implications of COVID-19 in Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, South Sudan...

How can data be used for the benefit of society without violating privacy? A paper by Data-Pop Alliance and Vodafone Institute describes four requirements....

These 4 research papers were developed in collaboration with and funded by the Agence française de développement (AFD) between 2016 and 2019 under a joint research programme with Data-Pop Alliance and research partners titled “Strengthening the evidence-base for leveraging Big...

Originally published by Southern Voice January 21, 2019. By Emmanuel Letouzé and Micol Stock The development effectiveness landscape has been significantly transformed since the two major milestones of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005 and the 2008 Accra...

[This post has been updated to include the supporting pedagogical material] Data-Pop Alliance ran a 3-day training workshop from June 27-29, 2017 on “Leveraging Big Data for sustainable development” at the United Nations Office at Nairobi (UNON) in partnership with...

Algorithms are profoundly changing the world we live in; they seem to be everywhere, yet often hidden and generally poorly understood by the general public. They are referred to as ‘black boxes,’ concealing sophisticated mechanisms that crunch citizen-consumers’ data to...

The term “datafication” was coined to describe the consequences of the digital revolution: the growing generation, collection and storage of digital information concerning all aspects of the physical world (including earth activity, weather, climate, and biosphere), human lives and activities...

Data-Pop Alliance will co-host two side events during the first World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) held in Istanbul, Turkey this week: a remote side event with UNOCHA in New York on May 23rd, and an official WHS side event in Istanbul...

This is the first in a series of blog posts on our ongoing work exploring the applications and implications of Big Data and migration. People have always been on the move—whether to seek refuge from war and persecution, find jobs...

While the Library of Alexandria was once believed to contain the sum of human knowledge around the third century B.C.E, it is now near impossible to quantify and increasingly difficult to store the volume of data generated by humans as...

The AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Sciences) Science and Human Rights Coalition organized a 2-day conference on ‘Big Data and Human Rights’ on January 15 and 16 in Washington DC, where Data-Pop Alliance’s co-founders Emmanuel Letouzé and Patrick...

  Big data: early years and foundational pieces An early mention of the upcoming “Industrial Revolution of data” can be found in a blog by Joe Hellerstein, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. It was published in...

What is big data, and could it transform development policy? Emmanuel Letouzé takes a close look at this emerging field. In just a few years ‘big data’ have affected industries and activities from marketing and advertising to intelligence gathering and...

Unit Size What it means Bit (b) 1 or 0 Short for “binary digit”, after the binary code (1 or 0) computers use to store and process data—including text, numbers, images, videos, etc. Byte (B) 8 bits Enough information to...