Christopher J. Ruhm is Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the University of Virginia. He is a Research Associate in the Health Economics, Health Care Policy, and Children’s Programs of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Germany. 

Professor Ruhm’s recent research has focused on examining how various aspects of health are produced – including the causes of the fatal drug overdose epidemic, the rise in obesity, and the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and health – and on the role of government policies in helping parents with young children balance the competing needs of work and family life. His earlier research includes study of the determinants of health and risky behaviors, effects of job displacements and mandated employment benefits, transition into retirement, and the causes and consequences of alcohol and illegal drug policies. He is co-author of Time Out With Baby: The Case for Paid Parental Leave (published by Zero to Three) Turbulence in the American Workplace (published by Oxford University Press) and has more than 100 pieces published as book chapters and articles in economics, public policy and health journals. His research has been cited in national and international media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, etc..

Professor Ruhm is currently associate editor of the Journal of Health Economics and Southern Economic Journal, on the editorial board of the American Journal of Health Economics, Economics Letters and the Journal of Labor Research, President of the Southern Economic Association, on the Board of Directors of the American Society of Health Economists and a steering committee member of the Southeastern Health Economics Study Group.

Fabrizio Mazzonna is an Associate Professor in Economics at the Faculty of Economics of Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI) in Lugano where he also serves as the director of Center for Economic and Political research on aging (CEPRA). 

Professor Mazzonna's research interests are in the fields of health and labor economics and applied microeconometrics. His research has mainly focused on the economics of aging — especially on the determinants of cognitive depreciation over the life-cycle and its relationship with individual economic behavior and choices. He published articles in international journals on issues related to the effects of retirement and education on cognitive abilities of the elderly. More recently, he has investigated the effect of immigration on native and immigrants' health and the relationship between sleeping and health.

Since September 2014 Professor Mazzonna is the scientific director of the Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+) Summer School in Public Health Policy, Economics and Management that takes place every year in August in Lugano. From September 2015 to May 2017 he has been the academic director of the SSPH+ International Doctoral Courses in Health Economics and Policy. Professor Mazzonna is one of the founding members and secretary of the Swiss Society of Health Economics (sggö) which runs the SSPH+ International Doctoral Courses in Health Economics and Policy.

In June 2017, he was the scientific and local organizer of the first CEPRA-NBER Workshop on Aging and Health joint with Massimo Filippino (USI and ETH Zurich) and Jonathan Skinner (Darmouth College and NBER).