New Faculty and Research Scholars 2022-23

Each year new scholars, practitioners, and researchers bring their expertise to the SIPA faculty. We highlight below some of our additions for 2022-23. Welcome to all!

FACULTY

Ebonya Washington has joined Columbia as the Laurans A. and Arlene Mendelson Professor of Economics and a professor of international and public affairs. Washington’s expertise is in political economy, with a focus on public economics and economics of inequality.  Her research utilizes innovative methodologies to address important public policy questions, with a focus on race and inequality.

Mauricio Cárdenas joins SIPA as professor of professional practice in global leadership and as the inaugural director of the new MPA in Global Leadership. Cárdenas is an expert on Latin America and economics and served as Colombia’s finance minister from 2012 to2018, where programs he implemented resulted in sharp reductions in poverty and inequality. In the coming year, Cárdenas will work to launch the MPA in Global Leadership, which will enroll its first students in 2023.

Daniel Naujoks, a lecturer in the discipline of international and public affairs, will serve as director of the International Organization & UN Studies specialization. His work focuses primarily on issues related to international migration and development and homeland-diaspora relations. He will teach courses on these topics, as well as on the United Nations and the core MPA course Politics of Policymaking.

Ghassan Salamé will be the Kent Visiting Professor of Conflict Resolution this fall. Salamé is a former Lebanese minister of culture and was a senior advisor to the United Nations secretary-general. He will teach a course this fall, Ending Civil Wars.

Stuart Firestein, a tenured professor and former chair of biological sciences at Columbia, is co-teaching The Use of Science-based Evidence in Decision with Natalia Pasternak Taschner (see below).

Spring 2022

João Vale de Almeida, a longtime European diplomat who currently serves as the European Union’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, has been named as SIPA’s George W. Ball Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs for spring 2023 . A native of Portugal, Vale de Almeida has vast experience in international governance and has for many years helped to devise and implement European foreign policy.

Martín Guzmán will join SIPA as the William S. Beinecke Visiting Professor of Public Policy. Guzmán served as Argentina's minister of economy from 2019 to 2022. His research has focused on sovereign debt, international macroeconomics, monetary economics, and economic development. As Beinecke Professor, he will teach a course this spring and deliver a public lecture on topics to be announced.

Alan Taylor will join SIPA as visiting professor of international and public affairs. His research spans several areas, including international economics, macroeconomics, finance, growth, development, and economic history. He has made important contributions in these areas including the quantitative study of credit booms and financial crises, the trilemma of international macroeconomics, the determinants of exchange rates, and the economic history of Argentina.

Adjunct Faculty

Leonardo Beltran is a distinguished visiting fellow at SIPA's Center for Global Energy Policy, a non-resident fellow at the Institute of the Americas, and an executive fellow of the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary. He enjoyed a distinguished 13-year career in public service in the government of Mexico, including as the longest serving deputy secretary of energy (2012-2018). Beltran is co-teaching Energy Transition in Latin America with Luisa Palacios.

Neri Bukspan, an adjunct professor of international and public affairs and the Brandmeyer Fellow for Impact and Sustainable Investing, is teaching Environmental, Social, and Governance Reporting. He is is a capital markets and corporate reporting expert and strategic advisor with over 30 years of global finance, accounting, risk and managerial cross-sector experience and managing change during volatile business and regulatory cycles. 

Lisette Nieves is the president of the Fund for the City of New York (FCNY), an institution charged with developing and helping to implement innovations in policy, programs, practices and technology in order to advance the functioning of government and nonprofit organizations in New York City and beyond. She is teaching Dynamics of New York Public Policy.

Luisa Palacios, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy, has enjoyed a multidisciplinary career in the intersection of energy, finance, and policy. She is co-teaching Energy Transition in Latin America with Leonardo Beltran.

Natalia Pasternak Taschner, an adjunct professor of international and public affairs, has a PhD and post-doctorate in microbiology, in the field of bacterial genetics at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. co-teaching The Use of Science-based Evidence in Decision with Stuart Firestein (see above).

Research Scholars

Gautam Jain is a senior research scholar at SIPA's Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP). He focuses on the role of financial markets and instruments such as green bonds and sustainability-linked bonds as well as carbon markets in the

transition to net-zero emissions, particularly in emerging countries.

Karen E. Young is a political economist focusing on the Gulf, the broader Middle East/North Africa region, and the intersection of energy, finance and security. She is a senior research scholar at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy. She was a senior fellow and founding director of the Program on Economics and Energy at the Middle East Institute. She was a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and has been a professorial lecturer at George Washington University, teaching courses on the international relations of the Middle East.

Edward Fishman is a foreign-policy expert, business operator, and investor with experience spanning government service, technology startups, media, and thank tanks. An expert on the intersection of business, economics, and national security, Fishman is a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy and an adjunct professor of international and public affairs, where he teaches a graduate-level course on economic statecraft and strategy. He is concurrently an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.