My research group examines judgment and decision making related to food, agriculture, and the environment.
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Development at Cornell University. I was previously an assistant professor at Indiana University and affiliated faculty with the Ostrom Workshop and the Cognitive Science Program and a founding member of the Sustainable Food System Science initiative. I am an interdisciplinary scholar whose work draws on decision science, environmental psychology and environmental studies. My research examines cognition and decision making related to climate adaptation, sustainable agricultural technology adoption and food security. I am interested in the role of heuristics and cognitive biases in environmental decision making and how decision science can be used to enhance the sustainability of policy outcomes. In my work I use a combination of household level data, behavioral experiments, and environmental data. My geographic focus is predominately in arid regions of Africa but I also work on these topics in the US and around the globe.
