Jose Ramon Albert is a senior research fellow of PIDS, the government think tank. He is former chief statistician of the Philippines as the secretary general of the defunct National Statistical Coordination Board. Albert is a professional statistician who has authored papers and popular writings on topics spanning poverty analysis, education statistics, ICT statistics and big data, climate change, and innovation. He is also a member of various bodies and expert groups on statistical matters, including the United Nations Global Pulse Privacy Advisory Group and the Philippine Committee on Higher Education’s Technical Committee on Statistics.  

For over 15 years, Albert has worked in two dozen countries supported by the development community, including the ADB. He has taught at several higher educational institutions and has directed various statistical capacity-building activities. He is past president of the Philippine Statistical Association, Inc. He took a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Mathematics (summa cum laude and Awardee for Excellence in Mathematics) from DLSU (1988) with a DOST-SEI Scholarship. He earned his Master of Science in Statistics (1989) and PhD in Statistics (1993) from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.