His research interests center on the effects of technology on society—specifically, the effects of automation on labor market outcomes and the acquisition of skills and human capital.

Before joining MIT in 2016, Sebastian served as research assistant for Susan Athey and Markus Mobius at the Microsoft Research New England Lab and worked on several projects, including the Impact of News Aggregators on Internet News Consumption and the Indonesian Celebrity Immunization Twitter Experiment. 

He also served as a data science intern with LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team and continues to study how career paths and labor mobility have changed over time with the team.