Saba Waheed is the director of the UCLA Labor Center. Prior to this role, she spent 11 years as the center’s research director. In her time at the UCLA Labor Center, she has built the research infrastructure for, and led, more than 40 studies in partnership with community and labor organizations. Among these was the first-ever study of domestic work employers, a multi-year study of workers and learners, and the first national study on nail salon workers and owners. She has also conducted research related to gig workers, young workers, Black workers, LGBTQ+ grocery workers, retail workers, fast-food workers, and restaurant workers. With nearly 20 years of experience developing community-led research projects, Waheed’s work is grounded in the “research justice” framework, which she co-developed to address structural inequities in research. In addition to her research work, she is an award-winning radio producer and writer. She co-produces the podcast Re:Work, a storytelling show about workers, and she co-wrote and co-produced the animated film, “I am a #YoungWorker.” Previously, she was a part of the shared leadership team and the research director of DataCenter and a researcher at the Urban Justice Center. Waheed received an M.A. in anthropology from Columbia University and a B.A. in English and religious studies from the University of California, Berkeley.
Expert Type: Grantee
Andres Sawicki
Andres Sawicki is a professor of law at the University of Miami, director of the Data, Ethics, & Society Program at the Frost Institute for Data Science & Computing, and director of the Business of Innovation, Law, & Technology Concentration at the University of Miami School of Law. An internationally recognized scholar of intellectual property law, his work explores how legal rules shape creativity, innovation, and emerging technologies. Sawicki’s recent research includes “The Law of Creativity?” (Cornell Law Review, 2025), an argument for grounding IP in the sociology and psychology of creativity, and “The Terms and Conditions of Generative AI” (funded by the Frost Institute), which examines how terms of service influence consumers’ rights and liabilities when using generative AI. He is also a co-author of Patent Law: An Open-Access Casebook, the most-downloaded patent law casebook on SSRN. Sawicki received his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.
Sean O’Brady
Sean O’Brady is an assistant professor at the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University. He has broad interest in labor unions, precarity, worker power, and employment institutions. He is currently investigating the impacts of digitalization on job quality and well-being in the telecommunications and retail industries. He is also involved in a project examining how employers adapt to increases in the minimum wage. His work has been published in outlets such as the British Journal of Industrial Relations, Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy, and Human Resource Management Journal. It has also been featured in Forbes, The Globe and Mail, CBC, BNN Bloomberg, and elsewhere. In addition to working at McMaster University, O’Brady has research affiliations with Cornell University’s Ithaca Co-Lab, the Inter-University Research Centre on Globalization and Work, and the McMaster Centre for Research on Employment and Work. He received his Ph.D. from the Université de Montréal School of Industrial Relations.
John E. McCarthy
John McCarthy is an associate professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. His research examines how to build and sustain collaborative organizations and how employee participation shapes both worker experiences and broader organizational outcomes. More recently, his work has focused on the responsible adoption of emerging technologies—particularly generative AI—and their implications for the future of work. His scholarship has appeared in leading outlets, including: Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Industrial Relations, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, and Harvard Education Press. Before joining Cornell, McCarthy was a visiting doctoral student and research fellow at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. He earned his Ph.D. in industrial relations and human resource management from Rutgers University’s School of Management and Labor Relations.
John Newman
John Newman is the Herff Chair of Excellence at the University of Memphis School of Law, where he researches and writes about a wide range of anti-monopoly issues, with a particular focus on digital zero-price markets. He currently serves as a member of the advisory boards of the American Antitrust Institute, the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies, and the Academic Society for Competition Law. Newman has had the honor of serving in both federal antitrust enforcement agencies, first as a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division and, more recently, as deputy director of the Federal Trade Commission Bureau of Competition. In that role, he led the Bureau-wide project to identify and draft guidance on enforcement priorities under FTC Chair Lina Khan, helped to oversee the agency’s monopolization case against Meta Inc., and played a central role in building the agency’s ongoing monopolization case against Amazon.com Inc. Newman received his J.D. from the University of Iowa College of Law and his B.A. in Political Science from Iowa State University.
Adam Seth Litwin
Adam Seth Litwin is an associate professor at Cornell University’s ’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, where he also directs the Ph.D. program. He recently served as the J. William Fulbright Visiting Professor of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney in Australia. Litwin’s research, anchored in industrial relations, examines the determinants and impact of labor relations structures and technological change. He also writes on issues involving technological change, work, and workers in the health care sector. Litwin has published a mix of empirical and conceptual studies at the intersection of labor relations and technological change, in both industrial relations and medical journals, including: the Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Industrial Relations, the British Journal of Industrial Relations, Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations, Human Resource Management, Applied Clinical Informatics, and the International Review of Psychiatry. Before earning his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Litwin conducted research on industrial relations institutions in Great Britain as a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Fellow at the London School of Economics. He also was a research assistant at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington.
Brian Justie
Brian Justie is a senior research analyst at the UCLA Labor Center. His doctoral research, which examines the impact of new technologies on work and workers, has been published in academic journals, including Critical Inquiry, Internet Histories, and Logic. As a graduate student, he co-authored several reports with the Labor Center, including studies of working conditions and wages in the gig economy and fast-food sector. As a staff researcher, he has led projects investigating the impacts of automation at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, as well as the role of temporary staffing agencies in Southern California’s meatpacking industry. Justie completed his Ph.D. at UCLA in the Department of Information Studies.
Adam Blandin
Adam Blandin is an assistant professor of economics at Vanderbilt University. He is a macroeconomist with research interests in labor markets and public policy. His current research focuses on understanding the determinants of labor supply, the relationship between family structure and inequality, and the evolving nature of work. He co-developed and runs the Real-Time Population Survey, a quarterly nationally representative survey of U.S. households designed to deliver novel insights on the state of the labor market. Blandin’s research has been published in top economics journals, including the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. His work has also been featured in media outlets such as Bloomberg, The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Prior to joining Vanderbilt, he was an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he was a regular visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Blandin earned his Ph.D. in economics from Arizona State University.
Alexander Bick
Alexander Bick is a senior economic policy advisor in the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. He is a macroeconomist with research interests in labor markets and economic growth. His current work focuses on two areas: within- and cross-country differences in hours worked and the role of public policy, and recent labor market trends, including remote work and the adoption of generative AI. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he co-led a high-frequency online labor market survey with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas to provide real-time estimates of the state of the labor market. Bick’s research has been published in top economics journals, including American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies, and Quarterly Journal of Economics. His work has also been featured in media outlets such as Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Prior to joining the St. Louis Fed, he held academic positions at Goethe University and Arizona State University and spent a sabbatical in 2019 as a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Bick earned his Ph.D. in economics from Goethe University Frankfurt.
Ariel Avgar
Ariel C. Avgar is a David M. Cohen Professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and director of the Center for Applied Research on Work. His research focuses on two primary areas within employment relations. First, he explores the role that employment relations factors play in the health care industry, examining the effects of a variety of workplace innovations, including new technology, delivery of care models, and innovative work practices, on patients, front-line employees, and organizational performance. Second, he studies conflict and its management in organizations, with a focus on the strategic choices made by firms, investigating the adoption and implementation of organizational-level conflict management practices and systems to better understand the consequences of conflict for employees and employers. Avgar’s research has been published in a number of journals, including: Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Industrial Relations, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, International Journal of Conflict Management, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Negotiation and Conflict Management Review, Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations, Health Services Research, and Medical Care. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University.