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Home > Academics > Degree Programs > PhD in Sustainable Development > Student Profiles

Student Profiles

Students in SIPA's Sustainable Development PhD program come from a wide variety of backgrounds and are working on a diverse set of research topics.  Select profiles below provide an idea of the breadth of interests reflected in the program.

Pre-MPhil
Belinda Archibong
Research Interests: energy planning, resource management, climate and African economic development
Xiaojia Bao
Research Interests: economic growth, environment pollution, poverty, and water resources
Prabhat Barnwal

Research Interests: environment and development, agriculture,
environmental health, climate change

Aaron Baum
Research Interests: low-resource health systems, integration of microfinance and health care, implementation-oriented research on community health worker subsystems, and rural markets. 

Kayleigh Campbell
Research interests: urbanization, green building
Johannes Castner
Research Interests: resource scarcity and resource distribution, positivist questions about poverty and inequality

Anthony D’Agostino
Research Interests: climate change adaptation policy in least developed countries, environmental decision analysis, and impact evaluation
Denyse S. Dookie
Research Interests: climate change, adaptation, policy, poverty, livelihoods, vulnerability, small island states
Marion Dumas
Research Interests: science and practice of ecological restoration and its economic + social implications, sustainable management of biogeochemical cycles, phosphorus scarcity and food security, ecosystem responses to hydrological perturbations, transdisciplinary case studies

Pablo Egaña del Sol
Research Interests: education, behavioral economics, mining, energy and political economy
Habtamu Fuje
Research Interests: development microeconomics, poverty-agriculture nexus and international trade
Amir Jina
Research Interests: climate change adaptation, resilience, disaster risk reduction, community development
Booyuel Kim
Research Interests: poverty reduction, microfinance, social business enterprise
Stephanie Lackner
Research Interests: environmental economics, climate change and energy economics

Kimberly Lai
Research Interests: natural resources, ecosystem services, collective arrangements, and international agreements

Geoffrey McCarney
Research Interests: environmental & resource economics, ecosystem services, climate, risk
Personal Web Site: www.columbia.edu/~grm2119/
Kyle Meng
Research Interests: environmental, applied, and public economics; climate uncertainty and policy
James Rising
Research Interests: sustainable design, system modeling, Himalayan
flooding, alternative economics, social change innovation, ecocentric
framing

ling

 

 Tse-Ling Teh
Research Interests: risk analysis, natural disasters, public policy
Semee Yoon

Research Interests: environmental, resource and development economics; poverty alleviation, livelihoods enhancement, health, climate change adaptation, ecosystem services, resilience

Xiaojie Zhang
Research Interests: agriculture and community-based development in Africa
Nan Zhong
Research Interests: environmental and resource economics
Post-MPhil
Jesse Antilla-Hughes
Research Interests: climate change, risk, behavioral economics, disasters, finance
Mo Ji
Research Interests: economic development, economic growth, and the economies of East Asia, including China
Geoffrey Johnston
Research Interests: malaria, poverty eradication, behavioral economics, mathematical modeling
Nicole Ngo
Research Interests: urban air pollution, modeling
Mark Orrs
Research Interests: Africa, education, health, business development
Aly Sanoh
Research Interests: sustainability, infrastructure, decentralization
Anna Tompsett
Research Interests: water, infrastructure, complementarily, rural development
Alumni
Saifedean Ammous
Research Interests: environmental economics and development economics; monetary economics, international economics, macroeconomics
Jessica Barnes
Research Interests: water in the Middle East; political ecology, resource management, international development
Ram Mukul Fishman
Research Interests: groundwater, India, hyperbolic discounting, heterogeneous discounting
Solomon Hsiang
Research Interests: climate, economics, risk, applied statistics
Chandra Kiran Krishnamurthy
Research Interests: environmental economics, applications of statistical methods to Climate Issues, applied econometrics

Margaret MacLeod
Research Interests: human capital formation and transfer in developing economies, specifically, education as well as maternal and infant health.

Gordon McCord
Research Interests: geography, health, poverty traps, GIS, spatial econometrics
Personal Web Site: www.earth.columbia.edu/people/gmccord

Daiju Narita
Research Interests: interrelationship of technology and policy with regard to the global climate change problem
Anisa Khadem Nwachuku
Research Interests: health, disparities, vulnerability, materialism, capabilities
Jose Carlos Orihuela
Research Interests: political economy of development; green governance, resource and environmental conflicts
Lily Parshall
Research Interests: Energy planning; geography, urban energy, urban climate
Marta Vicarelli
Research Interests: climate variability and change, applied microeconomics, design of risk-reducing mechanisms