The Department of Education is thrilled to welcome Saloni Gupta as Jonathan M. Nelson Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Education. Gupta will teach EDUC 0800: Edvolution – The Economics of Education and Innovation, a new undergraduate course that will examine the dynamic relationship between education, innovation, and economic opportunity in the U.S. and global contexts.

Gupta’s research lies at the intersection of education, innovation, and economic development. She studies how education systems can foster innovation, creativity, and adaptive problem-solving—the higher-order skills that drive economic opportunity in a rapidly changing labor market. Her work also examines how new technologies, teaching models, and institutional designs diffuse through education systems, and the conditions under which educational innovations successfully scale.

Before earning her Ph.D., Gupta wore many hats—she taught in a juvenile home for children rescued from the streets, gained entrepreneurial experience by launching nationwide teacher training programs, worked as a software engineer, and served as a policy consultant to multiple Indian state governments. 

Prior to joining Brown, Gupta was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Stanford King Center on Global Development. She holds an M.A. from Stanford University and completed her Ph.D. in Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University in 2024, where she was awarded the NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship in 2023.

Gupta is a visiting researcher at Aalto University, a research collaborator with the Development Innovation Lab at the University of Chicago, and an invited researcher with J-PAL’s Science for Progress Initiative.

Gupta’s new course will explore how education builds human capital driving economic growth, how this capital generates transformative innovations, and how these innovations demand new educational approaches—creating a continuous 'race' between education and technology. Students will analyze educational innovation models from school-based reforms and teaching methods to edtech tools. They will examine who becomes an innovator and how these dynamics affect different populations, with a focus on equity implications. Topics include the economics of funding innovation, why promising ideas in education fail to scale, and emerging trends shaping education's future.