What brought you to the UAB School of Public Health?

I am excited about the research environment here at the UAB School of Public Health. Being part of the Climate and Health Initiative, the possibility of cutting-edge research at the intersection of climate and public health with disciplinary and multi-disciplinary experts attracted me to the School.

What is the broad focus of your research?

I am an applied economist with research focus on climate economics and policy. I design field experiments and explore natural experiments to identify causal inferences. I use applied econometric techniques on large longitudinal data to answer policy relevant questions on climate and development.

Where did you receive your training and degrees?

I received my Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wyoming and post-doctoral training at London School of Economics and Political Science. Previously, I studied at Carleton University and the University of Dhaka for my master’s and bachelor’s degrees in economics.

What is the most exciting project you are currently working on?

I am currently investigating the role of national level growth on the pharmaceutical industry (for Bangladesh), vaccine hesitancy in a resource-constrained economy and the political economy of climate policy. I am highly excited about my project on identifying health co-benefits of climate policy in the global context.

What is your favorite self-authored manuscript?

My favorite self-authored manuscript is my 2020 Nature Climate Change paper "Reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from national climate legislation", which is the first ever attempt in quantifying the direct benefits of climate laws.

What professional accomplishment are you most proud of so far in your career?

I am very proud of every bit of my research on climate policy, however, there are two recognitions that I would like to highlight:

My 2020 Nature Climate Change paper was adapted to a non-technical version by the Science Journal for Kids and Teens, which is appropriate and understandable to middle school and lower high school students.

Previously, I was interviewed by the American Economic Association during its 2018 annual conferences in Philadelphia to talk about my research on land rental transactions as an adaptation strategy.

What is the coolest training or program you've been a part of, or your favorite conference you've attended?

Instead of large conferences, I prefer attending smaller workshops where it is easier to coordinate and make effective networks. I attended the Advances in Field Experiments (AFE) conference at the University of Chicago which was a great experience. However, my best conference/workshop experience was a 2022 climate policy workshop at the University of Mannheim in Germany, where I made a lot of professional friends and collaborators, some of whom I am still working with today.

What kind of research would you like to be doing that you haven’t yet had the opportunity to do?

I would like to research community-based adaptation to disaster and climate change and their public health implications.

If you had the funding to answer one research question what would that question be?

Being a climate economist, I would like to identify different non-market costs of climate change and non-market benefits of effective climate policies (with special focus on health and public health).

If you weren’t in academia, what would your career be?

I always wanted to be in academia. However, I am always highly engaged with the policymakers and the development sector. So, maybe I would be in politics if I was not in academia.