Meir Alkon
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate in Politics and Social Policy
Princeton University
Website: www.meiralkon.com
Email: [email protected]
Meir Alkon is a PhD Candidate in Politics and Social Policy at Princeton University, in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School. He is also a fellow at the Princeton Energy and Climate Scholars program and the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance. His research interests lie at the intersection of international/comparative political economy and political behavior.
In the realm of energy and environmental issues, Meir’s work has focused on the politics of sustainable development and resource access in India, as well as pollution and regime support in China. His research has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as the Journal of Politics and Energy for Sustainable Development. Meir previously received a BA in International Relations from Stanford University.
As an ISEP fellow, his research examines the politics of coal-fired power plants and renewable energy in China, and the water-energy nexus in India.
Sandra Baquie
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate
Columbia University
Email: [email protected]
Sandra is a PhD Candidate at Columbia University. She is a fellow of the School of International and Public Affairs’ Sustainable Development program. Her main research interests lie in the fields of Development Economics, Public Health and Demographics.
Her projects include the analysis of access and satisfaction with cooking arrangements in rural India as well as the study of conflicts’ consequences on demographics. Sandra holds a MPhil. Economics Research from the University of Cambridge (UK) where she received the Cambridge Trust Scholarship. She also graduated from the Ecole Centrale Paris (France) with a MSc. Engineering. As an ISEP fellow, her research will examine the role of urban/rural migration on resource use and forest degradation in Central India.
Brian Dylan Blankenship
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate in Political Science
Columbia University
Website: www.bblankenship.com
Email: [email protected]
Brian Blankenship is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in Columbia University. His research has focused on understanding the existence of inefficient governmental energy policies and the conditions under which they are dismantled. In particular, he has studied the reform of gasoline and diesel subsidies globally, as well as public opinion toward electricity access and electricity theft in India. He is interested in understanding how governments can craft policies that make energy more accessible, affordable, and sustainable.
Brian graduated with highest distinction from Indiana University Bloomington with a B.A. in Political Science, a B.A. in History, and a minor in French. As an ISEP student fellow, Brian is currently conducting work on energy policy, particularly on electrification and power sector reform in Uttar Pradesh, India.
Richard T. Clark
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate in Political Science
Columbia University
Website: www.richardtclark.com
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @Ricky__Clark
Richard Clark is a PhD Student in Political Science at Columbia University, specializing in International Relations and International Political Economy. His primary research explores the causes and consequences of international regime complexity. He also does work on international finance, globalization, and public opinion of international organizations.
Richard graduated summa cum laude from the University of Notre Dame with a B.B.A in Political Science and Information Technology Management. At Columbia, he has worked as a teaching assistant for the undergraduate “Governing the Global Economy” course and as a research assistant for IPE faculty. Previously, he worked in Baseball Operations with the Cincinnati Reds.
As an ISEP student fellow, Richard is currently probing the relationships between domestic institutions, energy finance, and the use of coal power.
Aleksandra Conevska
ISEP Student Fellow
Master in Political Science
McGill University
Aleksandra Conevska is a MA student in Political science at McGill University and a Research fellow at the Climate Change Adaptation Research Group (CCARG) in the Priestley International Centre for Climate at the University of Leeds, as well as Fellow at the Center for Peace and International Studies (CIPSS) at McGill University. Aleksandra’s research spans the political economy of climate change and patterns in adaptation financing through international bodies and fossil fuel divestment. Aleksandra graduated from McGill University in 2017 with a Joint Honors degree in Political Science and Environmental Science.
As an ISEP student fellow, Aleksandra conducts work on energy access in rural India.
Michael R. Davidson
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate in Engineering Systems
MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society
Website: www.mdavidson.com
Email: [email protected]
Michael Davidson is a PhD candidate in engineering systems at the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, and a researcher with the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Michael studies the engineering implications and institutional conflicts inherent in deploying renewable energy at scale, particularly in systems with emerging electricity markets.
His dissertation project focuses on integration challenges in China’s wind sector, using a combination of engineering-economic modeling and qualitative process-tracing to understand the impact (both economic and environmental) and mechanisms of market transitions. He is expanding his regional focus to India, which is trying to meet high renewable energy targets through market mechanisms. Michael holds an S.M. in technology and policy from MIT, and a B.S. in mathematics and physics and B.A. in Japanese studies from Case Western Reserve University.
Xinming Du
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate in Sustainable Development
Columbia University
Email: [email protected]
Xinming Duis a PhD Student in Sustainable Development at the School of International and Public Affairsin Columbia University. She is interested in evaluating environmental policies, by using economics tool to estimate the extent to which these policies actually improve enterprise environmental performance, or enhance environmental quality and health indicators. In particular, she focuses on emission trading schemes, environmental tax, and internal migration in China. She also studies the impact of air pollution and climate change on human system especially on health and human capital.
Xinming holds bachelor degree in Economics and Environmental Engineering honored by Tsinghua University, China. She took internships at UNDP, Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy, the International Council on Clean Transportation, and National Ministry of Environmental Protection in China. She also participated in United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change and the Stockholm, Basel and Rotterdam Convention as a party delegate. As an ISEP student fellow, Xinming is currently working on the political economy of air pollution.
Narayan S. Gopinathan
ISEP Student Fellow
B.S. Alum
University of California, Berkeley
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @narayangopinat1
Narayan graduated from UC Berkeley in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in environmental economics and policy and a minor in energy and resources. After graduating he spent the summer interning at the California Environmental Protection Agency, where he researched the reporting and verification mechanisms of the Under 2 Coalition members, as well as the steps that the California government is taking to reduce emissions from its departments.
After he finished his internship, Narayan accepted a Climate Corps fellowship to work for the County of Alameda to manage the impacts of the County’s electric cars on the power grid. Along with County staff and scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, he developed a program to maximize the use of electric vehicles while minimizing peak power demand.
Thanks to his experience at Alameda County, Narayan takes a specific interest in the challenge of decarbonizing the transport sector. However, more broadly, he is interested in all aspects of climate action, and how its impacts can be mitigated by all sectors of the economy. Since no single approach, institution, or academic discipline can solve climate change on its own, he believes that an interdisciplinary approach is required to solve these problems.
In the future, Narayan is interested in pursuing a PhD in an interdisciplinary field relating to climate change mitigation, and intends to pursue a career in energy and climate related research.
Carlos Gould
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Student in Environmental Health Science
Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
Email: [email protected]
Carlos Gould studies household energy patterns and energy transitions. His research focuses on the health impacts from traditional solid fuel cooking and the promise of clean fuel alternatives to achieve massive health, economic, and social benefits. In particular, he is studying the determinants of cooking patterns and multiple fuel usage (i.e., using a clean fuel and solid fuel concurrently) in Ecuador, India, and Ghana. Through his work he hopes to better understand the role of the cost of clean fuels in adoption and sustained usage, personal exposure to household air pollution in households using clean fuels, and the impact of ambient air pollution on individual personal exposure in clean cooking intervention communities.
Carlos graduated from Yale University with a BA in Environmental Studies in 2015. While at Yale he conducted fieldwork in Honduras and India studying cooking and fuelwood collection patterns. Before coming to Columbia he worked at Berkeley Air Monitoring Group and for the Stockholm Environment Institute conducting household energy research in Peru and Honduras.
As an ISEP student fellow, Carlos is working to understand LPG adoption and usage patterns in India. In addition, he hopes to evaluate sustained LPG usage in households adopting LPG stoves through the Ujjwala program.
Xiaogang He
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering
Princeton University
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://hydro.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~hexg/
Xiaogang He is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University working with Prof. Eric F. Wood and Prof. Justin Sheffield, also pursuing a certificate in Science Technology, and Environmental Policy (STEP) at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs advised by Prof. Michael Oppenheimer. His research interest focuses on the fundamental understanding of how climate change and climate variability affect the global flood and drought risk (FDR) and how we can improve the predictability of these extreme events to reduce their potential impact. Xiaogang has been developing a multi-scale physically motivated, information-theoretic framework to better quantify and diagnose changes in FDR in relation to climate variability and change, and anthropogenic influences such as water management (e.g., reservoir operations, irrigation, water withdrawals). Before coming to Princeton, he received his M.E. in Civil Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 2013; B.Eng (Major) in Hydraulic Engineering, and B.Sc (Dual) in School of Economics and Management from Tsinghua University, China, in 2011.
As an ISEP fellow, Xiaogang is working on the water-food-energy nexus in India using large-scale hydrological models and satellite-based observations.
Xiaoxue Hou
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Student in Energy, Resources and Environment Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies
Email: [email protected]
Xiaoxue Hou is an incoming PhD Student in the division of Energy, Resources and Environment at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Her research interests reside in energy policy analysis in developing economies especially in East and South Asia, using statistical methods and systems modeling. Xiaoxue has an interdisciplinary background in GIS, finance, applied math, and environmental system engineering. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in Geographical Science at Nanjing University with a minor in Finance. She is currently finishing a Masters in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. She has done research in SEARCH center on downscaling energy model emissions, during which she gained knowledge of large-scale energy models and national power sectors.
As an ISEP student fellow, she will conduct research in areas concerning sustainable energy policy design in emerging economies. She will specifically look at China’s carbon trading market and the synergies between price-driven policies and quantity-driven policies in China’s low carbon energy market.
Xiaomeng Jin
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate in Earth and Environmental Sciences
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Columbia University in the City of New York
Website: www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~xjin/
Email: [email protected]
Xiaomeng Jin is a PhD Candidate in Atmospheric Chemistry at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences of Columbia University. Her research aims to advance process-level understanding of air pollution and inform policy making process. Her research uses a wide range of tools, including atmospheric models (e.g. GEOS-Chem, CMAQ), satellite observations, and ground-based monitors. She is working on developing a space-based indicator that could inform the most effective emission control strategies for surface ozone pollution over populated regions.
Xiaomeng received her Bachelor of Engineering in Remote Sensing from Wuhan University. She received her Master of Science in Environment & Resources and Energy Analysis Policy from University of Wisconsin-Madison. As an ISEP fellow, Xiaomeng is working on developing models to study the transport pathways of emissions from power plants and how they affect the air quality of residential areas over India.
Jacob Kopas
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate in Comparative Politics and International Relations
Columbia University
Website: www.jacobkopas.com
Email: [email protected]
Jacob Kopas is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Politics and International Relations in the Political Science Department at Columbia University in New York. He has been the recipient of a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant in Political Science, and developed a successful EGAP Metaket grant for a field experiment measuring the impact of community-led forest monitoring on deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon.
Jacob’s research focuses on two fundamental topics. The first focus is on environmental politics and the political economy of environmental protection. Current research projects include studying the role of international human rights law in indigenous peoples’ movements, and uncovering how politics affect incentives for designating protected areas or permitting large energy projects.
The second focus examines the intersection of law and politics. His research pays special attention to the power of legal rights and international law to change political attitudes and mobilize social movements. Jacob’s doctoral dissertation studies these effects, as results of large land titling projects in the countryside of Peru and Colombia, including an ambitious land restitution project aimed at victims of forced displacement in Colombia.
Jacob’s work as an ISEP student fellow includes studies on the politics of energy infrastructure and policy, focusing on environmental licensing and the differential impact of pollution on vulnerable communities.
Wei (Josh) Luo
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate in International Affairs
Jinan University, Guangzhou, China
Email: [email protected]
Wei Luo is currently a PhD student of Jinan University in Guangzhou, China. He was born in Guangzhou China, but moved to California at the age of ten. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in February 2009. He attended Occidental College from August 2010 to May 2014, majored in Diplomacy and World Affairs and graduated with a magna cum laude. During his time at Oxy, he studied abroad at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and the St. Petersburg State University in St. Petersburg, Russia. He also interned in Udaipur, India during Summer 2011 with the Indian NGO Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) though the Northwestern University’s Global Engagement Summer Institute (GESI). This was partly driven by his academic interest in sustainable development. During the summer of 2013, he worked as an undergraduate research assistant at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) of the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS). Following his graduation from Oxy, he attended the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and received a Master of Science (MSc) in International Relations degree.
As an ISEP student fellow, Wei is currently conducting work on the environmental impacts of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which include projects funded by the newly established Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
Siyuan Ma
ISEP Student Fellow
Masters in Climate and Society
Columbia University
Email: [email protected]
Siyuan Ma is a recent graduate from the Masters in Climate and Society Program at Columbia University. Prior to Columbia, she received a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations with a minor in English Literature from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Siyuan serves as a visiting scholar at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, working on international climate change policy and U.S-China climate and energy policy. She was also a part-time lecturer at Beijing Foreign Studies University, teaching Energy Data Management for a summer program.
Siyuan has an interdisciplinary background in climate change science, international relations, and data analysis. Her research interests include energy transitions in emerging economies, international climate governance, and the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals at national and regional levels.
At ISEP, Siyuan is studying the role of distributed energy systems in national and rural electrification plans, focusing on countries with low electricity access rates.
Nada Maamoun
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate in Economics
University of Hamburg
Email: [email protected]
Nada Maamoun is Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the DFG graduate school for the Economic Analysis of international law at the institute of Law and Economic at the University of Hamburg, Germany. Nada is interested the analysis of international environmental agreements/policies with specific interest in those targeting air pollution and climate change. Her PhD research focuses on the empirical the analysis of international environmental policies and their effectiveness on reducing harmful emissions, motivating compliance and the effects of those agreements on the economy.
Nada completed a M.Sc. in economics from the German University of Cairo (GUC) with high honors, her thesis focused on investigating the effects of natural disasters on the economy and how government intervention (in the form of state of emergency) may affect the extent of economic losses. While at the GUC, Nada worked as a teaching assistant for undergraduate courses such as “Quantitative and Qualitative methods” as well as “Development economics”. During her masters, she did an internship at the institute for law and economics (ILE) in University of Hamburg, where she did research on states of emergency and natural disasters and their combined effect on the economy.
As an ISEP student fellow, Nada works on global coal-fired plants and their retirements as well as the public opinion on air pollution.
Aseem Mahajan
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Student in Government
Harvard University
Email: [email protected]
Aseem Mahajan is a PhD student in Government at Harvard University. His research explores how governments develop public policy and adopt technology to manage the effects of climate change. In particular, he focuses on the tradeoffs between cost, riskiness, speed, and durability as they pertain to decision-making around climate adaptation and solar geoengineering technologies, which mask some effects of climate change while failing to decrease or limit the greenhouse gas emissions that cause the underlying problem.
He also studies how individuals form public opinion toward these technologies, their perceptions about distributional equity around climate change bargaining, and the origins of preference formation among the US public. Aseem graduated with honors from Princeton University with an A.B. in Politics and certificates in Political Economy and Finance. Prior to that, he was a policy analyst at IFF, a community development financial institution (CDFI) in Chicago and a Senior Associate at PwC’s Global Transfer Pricing Division in New York. As an ISEP fellow, Aseem is currently conducting survey research in rural India to better understand variation in the supply and quality of electricity available to households and businesses.
Jorge Guillermo Mangonnet
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate in Political Science
Columbia University
Email: [email protected]
Jorge Mangonnet is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University, specializing in comparative politics with a regional focus in Latin America. His dissertation proposal examines how institutions that were designed to secure ownership, such as a land registration system, can threaten economic elites in times of increasing uncertainty. As an ISEP student fellow, he is currently conducting research on deforestation, natural resource extraction, and the political factors that shape the demarcation of protected areas across the Brazilian Amazon.
Jorge holds a B.A in Political Science at Universidad del Salvador and a M.A. in Political Science at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, both from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Prior to joining Columbia, he was a graduate research fellow at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), an exchange fellow at Fulbright’s Young Leaders Program, and a researcher for the Argentine Senate.
Rick McAlexander
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Student in Political Science
Columbia University
Email: [email protected]
Rick McAlexander is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at Columbia University, specializing in International Relations and Quantitive Methods. He is interested in applying modern machine learning techniques to current and historical political problems. His dissertation examines the strategies of violent and nonviolent resistance used by anticolonial movements in the immediate postwar era.
Rick earned a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Drexel University and a Master of Arts in History from Temple University. As an ISEP student fellow, Rick is currently working on examining the use of fairness claims in international environmental negotiations.
Tom Moerenhout
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Associate, Global Subsidies Initiative
Email: [email protected]
Tom Moerenhout is a PhD Candidate at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. His doctoral research is on the political economy of sustainable resource valuation and predominantly focuses on energy pricing reform in developing countries. In 2015-2016, Tom was a visiting researcher at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP). In 2016-2017, he was the Aramco-OIES fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. His current research mainly concentrates on energy pricing reforms in the MENA region and electricity pricing reforms in selected Indian states. In his research, Tom also zooms in on social safety net reforms to mitigate negative impacts from pricing reforms.
Since 2010, Tom has also worked for the Global Subsidies Initiative of the International Institute for Sustainable Development. As an Associate, he has cooperated with international organizations, NGOs and foundations to advance research on the sustainability of energy pricing policies and their reform. In recent years, Tom has also provided practical, in-country support to energy pricing reforms in – among others – Egypt, India, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. In
doing so, he has worked directly with local consultants and governments via the World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistance Program. Tom has a keen interest in the comprehensive reforms that are needed to transition to
sustainable energy policies, including a focus on the energy-water- food nexus. To this end, he supports a more proactive integration of behavioral economic insights into reform programs.
Sini Elisa Numminen
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate in Applied Physics
Aalto University, Finland
Email: [email protected]
Telephone: +35840 7483607
Sini Numminen is a PhD Candidate in applied physics in the School of Science at Aalto University in Finland. In her doctoral research she focuses on frugal innovations in energy, with the special attention to solar off-grid and island solutions. In particular, she looks at the technical reliability and quality questions of energy technologies that are manufactured low-cost and targeted towards the poorest customer groups in developing countries.
Sini graduated from Helsinki University of Technology in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Development Studies at the Department of Social Sciences in Helsinki University. Previously she has worked in Germany as a researcher in a European association Distributed Energy Resources Laboratories (DERlab) where she gained a strong insight on the potential of renewable and distributed power units and the smart grids concept.
As an ISEP student fellow, Sini is currently advising on technical questions of energy systems.
Setu Pelz
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate in Energy Economics
Europa Universität Flensberg
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://reiner-lemoine-institut.de/en/inclusive-energy-access-planning/
Setu Pelz is a Ph.D. Candidate in Energy Economics at Europa Universität Flensburg and a researcher within the Off-grid Systems research field at the Reiner Lemoine Institut (RLI) in Berlin, Germany. Setu is interested in energy access measurement, modelling and planning in developing economies. His research project focusses on the development of an Inclusive Energy Access Planning Toolbox - a set of data collection, analysis and modelling tools to support existing efforts for multidimensional energy poverty assessment, energy access planning and policy development. This work relies solely on open source software and tools such as OpenDataKit, OpenStreetMap and QGIS among others, and uses R and Python for data analysis, modelling and visualization. The research is being conducted with an initial focus on Nepal where the decentralization of responsibilities and budgets towards municipalities will require the decentralization of capacities in energy planning. In this context, the research is directly linked to a transition process currently underway.
Setu holds a double degree with honors in Mechanical Engineering and Business Management from RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. After completing his studies in 2010 he joined the renewable energy industry, gaining experience as an engineer in the onshore and offshore wind energy sector, first in Australia and later in Europe. In 2015, Setu left his career in the wind industry to work with startups in the energy access sector, initially in sub-Saharan Africa and later in Southeast Asia. In 2017 Setu joined the Off-Grid Systems research field at RLI where he combines his PhD research with developing dynamic energy demand profiles in rural energy access projects.
As an ISEP student fellow, Setu works with ISEP collaborators on energy access measurement and evaluation in India.
Shiran Shen
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate in Political Science
Stanford University
Website: www.shiranshen.com
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @ShiranShen
Shiran Shen is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at Stanford University. Her research explores how incentives shape environmental politics, with three areas of substantive inquiry: 1) political pollution cycle; 2) environmental consequences of government policies, and 3) public opinion on the environment. Shiran believes interdisciplinary techniques can help us generate new data, reveal new patterns, and offer new insights into important questions. Hence, she seeks to integrate relevant techniques from political science, engineering, earth systems, computer science, and other disciplines to illuminate problems of energy and the environment.
Shiran has published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, among other outlets, and her works have won best paper/essay awards from the American Political Science Association and the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. At Stanford, she has been an Asia-Pacific Scholar at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, a Predoctoral Fellow at the Stanford China Center, a Graduate Fellow at the Stanford Center for International Development, and an Affiliated Researcher at the Bill Lane Center for the American West. Her research has also received generous funding from the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences and the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy. Shiran received an M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University and a B.A. in Political Science and Environmental Studies from Swarthmore College.
As an ISEP Student Fellow, Shiran is studying the political economy of coal-fired power plants in China.
Narayan S. Subramanian
ISEP Student Fellow
JD/MPA Candidate
Woodrow Wilson School (Princeton University)
Columbia Law School
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @narayansub
Subramanian is a Juris Doctor and Master in Public Affairs dual degree candidate at Columbia Law School and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs at Princeton University. He received his Bachelor of Science in Earth & Environmental Engineering with a minor in Political Science from Columbia University. He has worked as a Research Associate at the Environmental Law Institute and served as an advisor to the Republic of the Marshall Islands on the COP-21 climate change negotiations that produced the Paris Agreement. He has also worked on California energy policy as an Associate Policy Analyst at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at Berkeley Law and a Summer Fellow at the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research.
Narayan is interested in long-term policy planning across national, state, and municipal governments to achieve climate change goals while fulfilling local public health and environmental imperatives. He believes such planning requires an interdisciplinary approach that includes technical, economic, and legal considerations. Narayan is an architect of the Marshall Islands 2050 Climate Strategy and has worked with California’s Under2Coalition to lay the foundation for sub-national governments to undertake similar planning exercises.
As an ISEP fellow, Narayan is studying the formulation of long-term climate strategies by national and sub-national governments and their implications for nearer-term policy decisions.
Joseph Sutherland
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate in Political Science
Columbia University
Email: [email protected]
Joseph Sutherland is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at Columbia University. His research generates novel insights about the interplay between artificial intelligence and politics, and leverages these insights to address critical functions of our political institutions. The subject matter is part of the emerging field of computational social science, which combines data science and political science to conduct research at scale. His research has been featured in top political science publications, including Political Behavior.
As a result of his work, he holds provisional patents for the reduction and mapping of dimensionality in “big” unstructured datasets and a system and interface for massive-scale, multi-container processing of generative programming to process “big data.” His work received the National Science Foundation’s Honorable Mention in 2017, considered a national honor. Before starting his Ph.D., he worked as a senior director at an industrial text analytics company, and as an advance staffer in the Obama White House. As an ISEP fellow, he partners with entrepreneurial electricity providers to examine the nature of microgrid electrification in developing countries.
Daniel Robert Thomas
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate, Political Science
Columbia University
Email: [email protected]
Daniel Robert Thomas is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. He specializes in comparative politics, specifically focusing on collective action, leader survival and political repression. In particular, he is interested in how repression shapes citizens’ preferences for regime change and leader-specific punishment. Daniel received a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in May 2016. In summer 2017, he was a visiting researcher at the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia. At ISEP, Daniel is conducting research on electrification in rural India.
Jason Chun Yu Wong
ISEP Student Fellow
Ph.D. Candidate in Sustainable Development
Columbia University
Website: https://jasoncwong.github.io
Email: [email protected]
Jason Wong is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sustainable Development at Columbia University and a Research Affiliate in the Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jason is interested in the impact of technology and infrastructure in regional socioeconomic outcomes and environmental decision making. His dissertation focuses on improving individual carbon offsets, economic impacts of aviation connectivity, and climate change impacts on aviation. He also works on electricity infrastructure and energy poverty in India. In 2016-2017, he is a National Academies of Sciences Transportation Research Board Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Graduate Research Awardee. He won the 2017 Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching by Graduate Student Instructors, the highest teaching honor bestowed upon a graduate student at Columbia.
Jason graduated summa cum laude from the University of Maryland with a B.S. in Environmental Science and Policy, a B.A. in Germanic Studies, a Certificate in Science, Technology, and Society, and a minor in Statistics. During his undergraduate studies, Jason was a College Park Scholar in Science and Global Change, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Ernest F. Hollings Scholar and a German Academic Exchange Service Undergraduate Scholar.
As an ISEP student fellow, Jason works with ISEP collaborators on electricity infrastructure and power sector reform in Uttar Pradesh, India.
Joonseok Yang
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate in Political Science
Columbia University
Email: [email protected]
Joonseok Yang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University, specializing in comparative/international political economy with an additional focus on methods. His research interests include political economy of environment and energy, trade and multinational corporations. His dissertation interrogates political and economic incentives to provide generous financial inducements such as tax incentives to deter corporations from relocating to other regions.
Joonseok holds a B.A in Political Science and French Literature from Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea and a Master of International Affairs (MIA) with a policy concentration in international finance and economic policy from Columbia University. Previously, he worked in the National Assembly in South Korea as a legislative staff.
As an ISEP student fellow, Joonseok is conducting research on power sector reform and rural electrification.
Erin York
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate in Political Science
Columbia University
Email: [email protected]
Erin York is a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University with a focus on comparative politics of the Middle East and additional interests in quantitative methods and political economy. Her dissertation project addresses information and legislative accountability in autocratic environments. At ISEP, Erin is currently conducting work on thermal infrastructure and political factors influencing environmental regulation in India. Her research addresses energy infrastructure and the relationship between elected officials and bureaucratic processes.
Erin graduated cum laude from Yale in 2009; following graduation, she spent a year conducting research as a Fulbright Fellow in Damascus, Syria. Prior to joining the political science department at Columbia, she worked as a researcher for the RAND Corporation. She is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
Alice Tianbo Zhang
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate in Sustainable Development
Columbia University
Website: alicetianbozhang.com
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @AliceTZhang
Alice Tianbo Zhang is a PhD Candidate in Sustainable Development at the School of International and Public Affairs in Columbia University. Her doctoral research seeks to improve the understanding of how large-scale natural and social processes, such as anthropogenic climate change, natural disasters and development-induced forced migration, affect human welfare and the policy tools available to address the challenges of sustainability. More fundamentally, she is interested in tackling issues of environmental and social justice, especially as they relate to the disparities in health, education and political representation of the disadvantaged and marginalized.
Alice graduated cum laude from the University of California, Berkeley with a B.A in Economics, Statistics and a minor in Public Policy. At Columbia, she has worked for the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), the Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP) and the Earth Institute Research Program on Sustainability Policy and Management (SPM). Previously, she worked in Councilmember Gordon Wozniak’s office in the City of Berkeley on implementing the Berkeley Climate Action Plan.
As an ISEP student fellow, Alice is currently conducting work on global energy infrastructure, specifically on dams.
Noah Zucker
ISEP Student Fellow
PhD Candidate in Political
Columbia University
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @noahzucker
Noah Zucker is a PhD student in political science at Columbia University, specializing in international relations and comparative politics with an additional focus on quantitative methods. His research interests include democratization, international cooperation, and the economic implications of conflict.
Noah graduated summa cum laude with a BA in international relations from the University of Southern California, where he did research on environmental politics in the Arctic. As an ISEP student fellow, Noah is exploring relationships between democratization, international energy financing, and coal power.