Hi! I am Moe Kyaw Thu, but most people call me Moe since the last two parts of my name are often difficult to pronounce. I was born in Myanmar (Burma) and have lived abroad since 2014, including the US, Denmark, Germany, and Japan, and now back to the US for my Ph.D. studies.
I am a Ph.D. student in Public Policy at Georgia Institute of Technology’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy. I am also working towards a Master of Science in Computer Science (Residential On-Campus Program), specializing in Machine Learning, as well as a Master of Science in Statistics.
Research
My research applies computational and causal-inference methods to questions at the intersection of emerging technology and policy. My dissertation comprises three papers. The first measures inequality in the distribution of innovative activity, using Gini-based concentration metrics to characterize how the gains from technological change are distributed across firms and technology classes. The second estimates the causal effect of the Supreme Court’s Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International (2014) decision on AI-related patenting, using difference-in-differences designs on patent citation and claim-language outcomes to identify how a shift in §101 subject-matter eligibility altered the impact and drafting of AI software patents. The third replicates and extends Hall, Jaffe, and Trajtenberg’s foundational citation-based measures of patent value and knowledge flows, re-examining their validity on modern, full-population patent data and assessing what their measurement choices imply for contemporary studies of innovation.
From the Spring of 2023 to the Summer of 2023, I worked as a Graduate Research Assistant under the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech, supported and funded by the Georgia Department of Transportation. My project mainly involved identifying appropriate strategies to rebalance contractual terms and conditions for major design-build (DB) and Public-Private Partnership (P3) projects to enhance competition in the transportation infrastructure market.