Lecturer in the Discipline of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Columbia University
Research Projects | Public Policy
I lead a number of applied research projects in collaboration with partner organizations, advise undergraduate and Master's students, and pursue my own research in healthcare and public policy.
January 2025 - Present
Understanding Gentrification and Livability in Buenos Aires, Argentina
Student Team Members: Sriya Gupta, Talia Cario
Previous Students: Jane Zhang, Edward Lucyszyn, Hannah Tollié, and Sanay Salil Sheth, Peder Dingsor, and Savnee Puranik
Developing a decision-support tool to map urban livability and predict land-use transformation in Buenos Aires, integrating socioeconomic, regulatory, and spatial data. Employs operations research and machine learning to study factors driving gentrification and guide equitable urban policy.
Project Partners: Anthropology Department of City of Buenos Aires Government, Terres Real Estate, and Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM)
September 2024 - December 2024
Empowering Community-Led Well-being Measurement
Student Team Members: Isaure Pilot, Jane Zhang, Adeolu Ajayi, Dafne Sarfati, and Patrick Passalacqua
Exploring the development of a community-led well-being measurement, aiming to create a localized well-being index that addresses the shortcomings of traditional economic indicators such as GDP, unemployment rates, and inflation. This initiative empowers local policymakers by providing digital tools and a comprehensive library of well-being indicators tailored to reflect the nuanced economic realities and improve communal policy decisions.
Project Partners: The U.S. Census Bureau and Harvard Business School
September 2023 - May 2023
The Platform for Outage, Welfare, and Energy Resilience
Student Team Members: Ziyu Zhao, Hao Lin, Tejas Raj, Jack Weissman, and Leo Hu
This project developed an interactive data platform to visualize and understand the impacts of electricity outages across the U.S. By integrating multiple federal datasets into a unified dashboard, N-POWER highlights how outages—driven by weather, infrastructure failures, or attacks—affect communities at national, state, and county levels. The platform surfaces key demographic and resilience indicators, helping identify populations disproportionately affected and supporting more informed, equitable policy and response strategies.
Project Partners: The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Energy
Other Projects
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Connecting Social Networks to the Geography of Street Violence
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Agriscience Supply Chain Simulation Modeling
January 2025 - June 2026