Kirk Doran is the Henkels Family Collegiate Chair and Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame.

Doran received his B.A. in Physics from Harvard University in 2002, his S.M. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 2002, and his Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University in 2008, where his dissertation won Princeton's labor economics dissertation award.

Doran's research focuses on issues in labor economics, innovation economics, and international migration, with a particular focus on human capital complementarities. His work has examined the implications of large migrations of top scientists on the productivity and knowledge generation of their peers. Recent work has focused on the role of externalities, collaboration, and geographic distance in knowledge production, the impact of top prizes on the intellectual content of their recipient's work, and the impact of highly skilled immigrants on firms which randomly receive them. Professor Doran's research has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Labor Economics, the Journal of Human Resources, Economica, Economics Letters, and Innovation Policy and the Economy, and has been funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Upjohn Institute, and the Kauffman Foundation.

Kirk Doran joined IZA as a Research Fellow in June 2021.