Chairholders

Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs is the first holder of the Royal Professor Ungku Aziz Chair for a two-year period starting 2007. He is the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Profesor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He was also a Special Advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. 

From 2002 to 2006, he was also the Director of the UN Millennium Project and Special Advisor to Unived Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millenium Development Goals, the internationally agreed goals to reduce extreme poverty, disease, and hunger by year 2015. Professor Sachs is also President and Co-Founder of Millenium Promise Alliance, a non-profit organization aimed at ending extreme global poverty. 

Professor Dr. Martin Ravallion is the Second Holder of the Royal Professor Ungku Aziz Chair from 2018 - 2020. He is based in Washington DC where he holds the inaugural Edmond D. Villani Chair of Economics at Georgetown University. Prior to joining Georgetown in 2013, he was Director of the World Bank's research department, the Development Research Group. He is also the previous President of the Society for the Study of Developement, a Senior Fellow of the Bureau for Research in Economic Analysis of Development, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, USA, and a non-resident Fellow of the Centre for Global Development.

Martin's main research interest over the last 30 years have concerned poverty and policies for fighting it. He has published over 250 papers in refereed journals and book volumes and six books. He has also advised numerous governments and international agencies. He holds a PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He has won numerous prizes including the John Kenneth Galbraith Award from the American Agricultural and Applied Economics Association and the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award.