The Future Potentials Observatory invites you to a Speaker Series event titled “FPO TALKS” presented by César A. Hidalgo, professor at the Toulouse School of Economics’ (TSE) Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and head of the Center for Collective Learning, a multidisciplinary research laboratory with offices at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAST) at TSE and the Corvinus Institute of Advanced Studies (CIAS) at Corvinus University of Budapest. He is an Honorary Professor at the Alliance Manchester Business School of the University of Manchester.  

Hidalgo is a Chilean-Spanish-American scholar known for his contributions to economic complexity and his applied work in data visualization and artificial intelligence. He is a founder of Datawheel, an award-winning company specialized in public data distribution and economic development strategy. He holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Notre Dame and a Bachelor in Physics from Universidad Católica de Chile. 

He is the author of dozens of peer-reviewed papers and three books: Why Information Grows (Basic Books, 2015),  The Atlas of Economic Complexity (MIT Press, 2014), and How Humans Judge Machines (MIT Press, 2021). His next book, The Infinite Alphabet (Penguin-Random House, 2025) is scheduled to be published in the summer of 2025. 

He has lectured at more than 200 events, including keynote and invited talks at academic conferences and professional events. He has also presented at TED, TEDx, and the World Economic Forum, both in Davos and at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions.