Dmytro Romanovych works at the Reform Delivery Office for the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. With a team of project managers, they work directly with the prime minister by facilitating reforms, monitoring progress and coordinating across ministries. The Reform Delivery Office focuses on issues of public administration reform, business climate improvement, industrial policy and innovations, healthcare reform and privatization. Romanovych is also an advisor to the Minister of Economy, and is responsible for deregulation and improving the business climate in Ukraine. In addition, he is an economic expert in the largest NGO coalition in Ukraine, the Reanimation Package of Reforms, which is the most influential non-governmental reform advocate in the country.

Romanovych's key responsibility is to ensure the Cabinet of Ministers and Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s Parliament) both adopt Ukraine's deregulation agenda. This includes developing the concept of the deregulation documents, involvement and coordination of the stakeholders, passing documents through approval process, public promotion, etc. Due largely in part to its deregulation reform, the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade was recognized as a leader in the reform process in comparison with other ministries Over the last year, Romanovych has organized several high-level meetings that have resulted in the adoption of 30 deregulation documents, the abolishment of 500 regulations and the passing of draft laws on state control system reform by the Verkhovna Rada. Prior to this he was among the creators of the Better Regulation Delivery Office institution, which is now is the key think-tank and task force for business climate improvement and restructuring of the government policy-making process. Romanovych graduated from Kharkiv State Economic University with a Master’s Degree in Economic Cybernetics.

Olexandr Starodubtsev is a Ukrainian reformer who is deeply involved in the creation of a new electronic public procurement system Prozorro, which is one of the most famous reforms in the country. Currently Starodubtsev is the Head of the Public Procurement Regulation Department in The Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine, and is an official policy maker in the spheres of public procurement and economic development in Ukraine.

The Prozorro system is famous for its different approaches to bottom-up reform based on the close collaboration between government, business and civil society. In 2016, the Prozorro system won several distinguished international awards, such as the Open Government Partnership Award, the Public Procurement Award, and was also recognized by the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development and Open Contracting Partnership. Moreover, Prozorro and its principles became an inspirational example for other Ukrainian reforms.

Starodubtsev was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine in 1979. He graduated from Kharkiv National University in 2002. Previously he worked on the stock market where he made his career as a back-office specialist up to a managing partner of a Ukrainian branch of a multinational financial institution. He received an MBA degree from the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School and became Alumnus of the Year in its first competition in 2015. He is married and has a son and a daughter.

Hongwei Yu joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center as a visiting scholar for the fall of 2017.  He is an assistant professor in Institute of Quality Development Strategy of Wuhan University. His research interests focus on economic growth quality and quality competition. From 2008 to 2015, he was the research assistant of two professors and an associated professor in related fields. He has worked on four different research projects and is now presiding over two projects on regional industry quality competitiveness.  He has so far had 13 papers published or forthcoming on journals and academic conference proceedings.

He is currently working on the issues of zombie firms and corporate restructuring in China.  He has joined the Employer-Employee Survey (CEES) of Chinese manufacturing in 2015, and gained plenty of research data on this topic. Based on this data, he is putting his effort into two working papers: the statistical analysis on zombie firms in China and the study on the relationships between political connection, entrepreneurship and zombies firms.

Dongmin Yao joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) during the 2017-2018 academic year from Central University of Finance and Economics (Beijing, China) where he serves as an associate professor.

His research interests encompass Basic theories of public finance; State governance and government behavior; Game theory; Micro Econometrics and organizational economics. During his time at Shorenstein APARC, Yao will participate in a study of modes of governance in Chinese bureaucracy.

Yao has led several national research projects including Projects of the National Social Science Foundation of China and the Nation Science Foundation Project. Besides, Yao serves as an editor of many top academic journals in China and contributed articles regularly to these publications. Yao has also won a lot of significant awards, like Wu yuzhang Humanities Social Science Award (one of the highest awards in the field of humanism social science in China and Yao is the youngest recipient of it), The Second Prize of the 6th National Excellent Public Finance Research Achievement (by Chinese Public Finance Society) and The Third Prize of the 7th Excellent Achievement in Scientific Research (Social Science) of College (by China’s Ministry of Education).  

Yao holds a PhD in game theory from Renmin University of China. He received his MA in mathematical finance and BA in international economics and trade, both from Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China.

Dr. Rui Wu currently serves as an assistant professor in Department of Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategy in School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University (Tsinghua SEM). She accomplished her PhD in business administration from University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business, MA in economics from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and BA in economics and international finance from Peking University, School of Economics. She teaches graduate level courses in strategic management, including strategic alliances, cooperative strategies, and research seminars. Prior to her doctoral training, she worked as a research analyst on Rwandan Projects in the Africa Division of World Bank in Washington, D.C..

Dr. Rui Wu’s research covers a broad range of firm-level strategic decisions, with a focus on Chinese firms and their inter-firm relationships. Her primary research areas include collaborative innovation, top-management teams, and political influences, all in the context of Chinese manufacturing firms. She has been a member and reviewer for annual conferences of Academy of Management (AOM), Strategic Management Society (SMS), and International Association for Chinese Management Research (IACMR). She also serves as an ad hoc reviewer for multiple top-tier journals.

Hak-kyu Sohn joins the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center as a Visiting Scholar during the 2017-18 academic year.

Sohn is founder and chairman of East Asia Future Foundation; former chairman of the Democratic Party; and former governor of Gyeonggi Province, in South Korea. His research interest is in how South Korea can be prepared for changes in international relations as well as for the fourth industrial revolution.

Sohn received a DPhil in Politics from University of Oxford, UK, and a BA in Political Science from Seoul National University.

Hirofumi Uchida joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) during the 2017-2018 academic year from the Kobe University’s Graduate School of Business Administration where he serves as a professor of Banking and Finance.

Uchida’s research interests focus on banking, financial institutions, and financial system architecture. During his stay at Shorenstein APARC, Uchida will conduct research on startup finance in the U.S. from the perspective of an international comparison with Japan. For this research, he receives Abe Fellowship (Social Science Research Council).

Uchida's research has been published in International Economic Review, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Economica, and Journal of Banking and Finance, among others. He is also an associate editor of Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, and a member of the Study Group for Earthquake and Enterprise Dynamics (SEEDs) and the Money & Finance Research Group (MoFiR). 

Uchida received his M.A. in Economics in 1995 and his Ph.D. in Economics in 1999, both from Osaka University. Prior to joining Kobe University in 2009, Uchida was with the Kyoto Institute for Economic Research at Kyoto University, and the Faculty of Economics at Wakayama University. He was also a visiting scholar at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University as a 2003 Fulbright Scholar.