Barthelemy Bikoi
Barthelemy is from Cameroon, where he completed his BS in Finance. He then pursued his Master’s in Leadership at Boston College, followed by a Master’s in Economics at Baylor University. Prior to joining Columbia, he was a Research Fellow at The World Bank Group, where he was sponsored by the Robert S. McNamara Fellowship Program to collaborate on research relating to the impacts of innovative technologies on agricultural productivity. He is interested in understanding the mechanisms that underlie voting behaviors in elections and is particularly keen to learn the rigorous tools which Economics provides for studying similar questions relating to society. He is currently assisting Professor Ebonya Washington on projects which examine how minority groups in the United States leverage the political system to meet their needs. Outside of Economics, he enjoys delving into Renaissance history and the history of the Roman Empire, with a particular fascination for the period of the Punic Wars.
Leonardo de Campos Gomez
Leo is a pre-doctoral research fellow working with Prof. José Scheinkman and Harrison Hong. He helps in projects that use both economic and ecological data to study how climate financing solutions might help to curb the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. He was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, where he got his degree in Economics from Insper. In his time there, he contributed as a research assistant to multiple experimental impact evaluations of country-wide educational interventions and wrote his senior thesis on the intersection of health economics and industrial organization. He values breadth in exploring the economics profession and is currently interested in how machine learning can be safely integrated into econometric practice, as well as the limits of this integration.
Arya Gadage
Arya is a pre-doctoral research fellow working with Prof Micheal Best and Prof Haoge Chang. She is currently working on research projects in applied microeconomics and econometrics. Her interests lie in optimization and graph theory problems exploring their intersection with economic behavior and data. Arya received a BS in Applied Mathematics and Statistics and a BA in German from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Prior to joining Columbia, Arya was working at the Intercontinental Exchange as a Data Analyst in Fixed Income Services.
Hriday Karnani
Francine Montecinos Puente
Francine (Aoi) Montecinos was born and raised in Santiago, Chile. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Commercial Engineering studies at Universidad de Chile, then pursued her Master’s in Economics at the same institution. During her time there, she served as a teaching assistant and contributed as a research assistant to microeconomics projects focusing on labor, health, and gender.
Her research interests revolve around understanding how public policy and government interventions can enhance economic efficiency and social equity. She aims to understand the factors driving gaps in health, labor, and education markets, especially for marginalized groups and disadvantaged minorities. Francine‘s work spans the fields of Industrial Organization, Public Economics, and Labor Economics. Beyond academia, Francine has experience in behavioral economics research in a public institution and volunteers teaching argumentation to disadvantaged high schoolers. During her undergraduate years, she was actively involved in competitive debate and social activism. She also enjoys writing amateur poetry in Spanish.
Website: aoimontecinos.github.io
Enrico Ruggieri
Enrico Ruggieri is a Predoctoral Research Associate at Columbia University, working with Professors Sebastián Otero and Tatiana Mocanu. His primary research interest is in econometrics and its applications to economics, particularly in labor, health and education. Before joining Columbia, he spent two and a half years in quantitative and economic research at the Brazilian systematic hedge fund Giant Steps Capital and at J.P. Morgan. Enrico holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of São Paulo. Outside of economics, he is a classically trained musician with experience as a piano accompanist, music educator, and in choral and orchestral conducting.
Andrea Scalenghe
Andrea was born and raised in Torino (IT), where he completed both a BS and an MS in Mathematics at the University of Turin, as well as an MA in Economics at the Collegio Carlo Alberto. He is now working with Sebastian Otero and Pietro Tebaldi on projects in education and health economics, using tools from industrial organization and applied microeconomics.
Isaac Shon
Nicole Theinova
