Kiwako Sakamoto is a Data Scientist with the Development Impact Evaluation (DIME) unit of the Development Research Group. Her current research interests include using computer vision to extract physical and socioeconomic features from imagery data as an alternative data collection methodology. She is also part of DIME Analytics team to help generate and curate more, better data for impact evaluation.
Previously, she served on the Big Data and Analytics Team with the World Bank's Innovation Labs, providing technical support to big data projects across various operations areas such as Energy, Transportation, and regional strategy in fragile states. She also was a Data Systems and Modeling Consultant with the Development Prospects Group at the World Bank, producing baseline forecasting models and managing high-frequency macroeconomic database. Kiwako graduated with a M.S. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with her training that mostly consists of working with physicists and computer scientists.