Jonathan Merker

Jonathan Merker is an innovation economist at RTI. He performs program evaluation for science and technology innovation programs, including evaluation design, survey and interview data collection, and economic/statistical analysis. He specializes in economic analyses such as econometric analyses and portfolio-based cost-benefit analyses to determine social return on investment from projects/programs. 

Currently, Mr. Merker is a project manager for RTI’s evaluation support of the CSIRO ON Accelerator Program. In this role, he designed infrastructure for the implementation of a bespoke monitoring and evaluation platform for the ON Program. Additionally, he designs and implements longitudinal surveys and manages the development and operation of the ON evaluation platform. This includes designing interactive evaluation reports and dashboards, implementing web-scraping/machine learning analysis of outcome data, and training CSIRO staff to engage with the platform. 

Mr. Merker  served as a technical writer for the Assessment of the Retrospective and Prospective Economic Impacts of Investments in U.S. Neutron Research Sources and Facilities. Under contract with NIST, RTI’s assessment included quantifying the economic impact of federal neutron scattering research facilities from 1968 to present and forecasting potential future benefits of increased U.S. investment through 2030. RTI assembled a team of economists, neutron scientists, and policy analysts to produce analyses, reports, and papers to provide a knowledge base from which investment and action can be launched. In this role, Mr. Merker interviewed participants from the NIST neutron scattering user program and led analysis on corporate use of facilities.