Philip Solimine

Philip Solimine

PhD Economist, Data Scientist

Biography

I am an economist and data scientist working in marketing ML at Microsoft. Before joining Microsoft, I worked on the marketing science & operations team at Chewy, and spent three years in the Vancouver School of Economics and the Centre for Innovative Data in Economic Research at the University of British Columbia. I earned a dual PhD in Economics and MS in Computational Science from Florida State University in 2022.

Most of my research falls into empirical industrial organization, behavioural economics, market design and political economy; my published work focuses on how platform design features, regulatory incentives, and market structure interact to determine the dynamics of social and economic networks, and examines the role of these endogenous network structures and their evolution in shaping economic outcomes.

These are complex systems; in addition to answering empirical questions my work has often developed new computational methods that expand the frontier of what we can learn from data. This includes contributions to causal machine learning, structural estimation, and control systems.

Download my CV.

Interests
  • Network economics
  • Market design
  • Economics and computation
  • Industrial organization
  • Experimentation
  • Optimal control
Education
  • PhD in Economics, 2022

    Dissertation: Economic behavior in dynamic networks Committee: Matthew Gentry (co-chair), Luke Boosey (co-chair), R. Mark Isaac, Cynthia Fan Yang, Anke Meyer-Baese

  • MSc in Computational Science, 2022

    Thesis: Optimal control for networked moments Committee: Anke Meyer-Baese (chair), Max Gunzburger, Paul Beaumont

  • MSc in Economics, 2018

  • BA in Mathematics, 2016

  • BSc in Economics, 2016

    Florida State University

Experience

 
 
 
 
 
Microsoft
Senior Data & Applied Scientist
Microsoft
Jan 2026 – Present Redmond, WA
As a senior applied scientist in Global Marketing Engines & Experiences at Microsoft, I build and deploy machine learning models to help connected sales and marketing teams optimize their strategies to drive business growth. I am the project lead for causal inference in marketing analytics, building foundational causal ML infrastructure and using it to drive incremental business value across the marketing funnel, from campaign targeting and signal design to engagement attribution and measurement.
 
 
 
 
 
Chewy
Data Scientist II
Chewy
May 2025 – Dec 2025 Bellevue, WA
As a data scientist in Marketing Science & Operations at Chewy, I helped build paid media mix modeling (MMM), optimization, and forecasting tools that support financial reporting and are used to optimize cross-channel marketing allocation. I was also involved in simulation, experimentation and incrementality testing efforts, particularly those that seeked to develop and optimize bidding strategy and signaling in advertising auctions.
 
 
 
 
 
Vancouver School of Economics University of British Columbia
Postdoctoral Fellow
Vancouver School of Economics
University of British Columbia
Aug 2022 – May 2025 Vancouver, BC
I was a research and teaching postdoctoral fellow in the Vancouver School of Economics and the Center for Innovative Data in Economics Research (CIDER) at UBC. In addition to my research, I instructed graduate and undergraduate courses in quantitative economics and data science, and developed many open-source course materials. For course notes and other information, see here.
 
 
 
 
 
Departments of Economics and Scientific Computing Florida State University
Charles & Persis Rockwood Doctoral Fellow
Departments of Economics and Scientific Computing
Florida State University
Aug 2017 – Jul 2022 Tallahassee, FL
I was the first Charles & Persis Rockwood Doctoral Fellow and a Research Fellow of the L. Charles Hilton Center in the Departments of Economics and Scientific Computing at FSU.
 
 
 
 
 
XSFS Experimental Social Science Lab Florida State University
Researcher
XSFS Experimental Social Science Lab
Florida State University
Jan 2015 – Aug 2017 Tallahassee, FL