Ante Prodan
Managing Director, CLARA Pty Ltd
Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney
Director, CSART
Ante Prodan is a complex-systems scientist and AI systems architect with three decades of hands-on software development behind the science. He builds decision-support for organisations facing hard problems, pairing generative AI with simulation modelling and a particular depth in multi-agent systems that runs from his PhD, through agent-based models that shaped health policy, to today's multi-agent AI. His tools have guided state and national policy, connected remote Himalayan villages, and now run useful AI on modest hardware without depending on the cloud. He works with governments, health systems, research institutions, and companies that need rigour they can trust. Because he still writes the code, they also get systems that actually ship.
30+
20+
PhD
9
Track record
- Simulation models that informed state and national health policy across suicide prevention, alcohol harm, tobacco control, and chronic disease.
- Published in The Lancet, Nature Medicine and Nature Mental Health, and the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.
- Chief Advisor on AI to the Mental Wealth Initiative, University of Sydney.
- Foundational software behind AirJaldi, now a rural internet provider across nine Indian states.
Flagship research
Generative AI and the economic transition
Ante's research argues that generative AI is the opening phase of a new economic order, not a productivity upgrade to the current one. It traces how AI-driven job displacement can erode income and demand past a self-reinforcing tipping point, with knock-on effects for asset values and population health. It asks what a stable transition would require. This work spans model architecture, deployment safety, and the compute and energy systems AI depends on.
Explore this research →Research strands
Generative AI, labour, and the economy
Generative AI, the economy, and safety
How AI-driven labour displacement could move economies past a socioeconomic tipping point, and how safety can be built into model architecture rather than bolted on at the output.
Explore this strand →Systems modelling and simulation
Complex systems and multi-agent modelling
Two decades building agent-based, system-dynamics, and discrete-event models (with particular depth in multi-agent systems) that guide health and social policy under uncertainty, from suicide prevention to alcohol harm and chronic disease.
Explore this strand →Social production and the Mental Wealth of nations
Mental Wealth and social production
Measuring the unpaid productive capacity that societies depend on but do not count, and bringing it into the evidence base that shapes economic policy.
Explore this strand →Youth mental health and suicide prevention
Youth mental health
Social determinants, service-system design, and the modelling behind more effective, better-targeted investment in young people's mental health.
Explore this strand →Collaborators and partners
Ante's work has been built in partnership with research institutions, health agencies, and field organisations across several continents. These are the relationships through which rigorous methods reach the places where decisions are actually made.