Michael Greenstone is the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, the College, and the Harris School, as well as the Director of the Becker Friedman Institute and the interdisciplinary Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. He previously served as the Chief Economist for President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, where he co-led the development of the United States Government’s social cost of carbon. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the Econometric Society, and a former editor of the Journal of Political Economy.

Greenstone’s research, which has influenced policy globally, is largely focused on uncovering the benefits and costs of environmental quality and society’s energy choices. His current work is particularly focused on testing innovative ways to increase energy access and improve the efficiency of environmental regulations globally. As a co-director of the Climate Impact Lab, he is producing empirically grounded estimates of the local and global impacts of climate change. He also created the Air Quality Life Index™ that provides a measure of the gain in life expectancy communities would experience if their particulates air pollution concentrations are brought into compliance with global or national standards.

Greenstone received a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University and a B.A. in Economics with High Honors from Swarthmore College.

Leni Chaudhuri is the Country Director of the TCD. Previously Leni was the Vice President of Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation, a leading grant making organization in India. Leni holds a PhD in Sociology from the SNDT Women’s University, M.Phil from the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University and MA from the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her academic interests are in the areas of health, education and governance.

Sam Ori is the Executive Director at Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago. From 2013 to 2015, he served as Executive Vice President at Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE), a Washington, DC-based organization dedicated to reducing American oil dependence in order to enhance economic and national security. From 2007 to 2013, Sam led SAFE’s policy work on a variety of topics, ranging from global oil and natural gas markets to transportation technology. Prior to joining SAFE, Sam spent four years working in the federal government at the Broadcasting Board of Governors and Department of State, including at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India.

Manoj Kumar is a senior advisor to Tata Trusts, where, in addition to his advisory role, he also owns the executive responsibility for all university/institutional partnerships and manages the Innovations/R&D portfolio. He has conceived and cofounded the Foundation for Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship (FISE) to nurture social innovators through their lab to market journey. Kumar is also the architect and chief evangelist of Social Alpha, an ecosystem stack that aims to provide full life cycle, idea-to-impact support to social innovators and entrepreneurs. He is currently raising a social enterprise fund to provide early-stage risk capital to high-impact technology startups in the social sector.

Prior to his association with Tata Trusts, Kumar cofounded Malgharia, a boutique consulting firm that helps companies identify and address their most critical challenges and turn around business performance.Additionally, he serves on the advisory and governing boards of a number of companies, including nonprofits and research institutions.

Michael Greenstone is the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, the College, and the Harris School, as well as the Director of the Becker Friedman Institute and the interdisciplinary Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. He previously served as the Chief Economist for President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, where he co-led the development of the United States Government’s social cost of carbon. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the Econometric Society, and a former editor of the Journal of Political Economy.

Greenstone’s research, which has influenced policy globally, is largely focused on uncovering the benefits and costs of environmental quality and society’s energy choices. His current work is particularly focused on testing innovative ways to increase energy access and improve the efficiency of environmental regulations globally. As a co-director of the Climate Impact Lab, he is producing empirically grounded estimates of the local and global impacts of climate change. He also created the Air Quality Life Index™ that provides a measure of the gain in life expectancy communities would experience if their particulates air pollution concentrations are brought into compliance with global or national standards.

Greenstone received a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University and a B.A. in Economics with High Honors from Swarthmore College.

Amanda Woodward is the William S. Gray Professor of Psychology and Dean of the Division of the Social Sciences. She was a founding member of the Center for Early Childhood Research. She completed her undergraduate degree at Swarthmore College in 1987 and her doctoral degree at Stanford University in 1992.  She joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1993.

Woodward has pioneered the development of experimental methods to investigate social cognition in infants and young children. Her research has yielded fundamental insights into infants’ social understanding and the processes that support conceptual development early in life. Her current work investigates infants’ sensitivity to interpersonal social structure, the effects of cultural and community contexts in shaping children’s social learning strategies and the neural processes involved in early social-cognitive development.

Woodward’s research has been recognized by a number of awards, including the Ann L. Brown Award for Excellence in Developmental Research, the APA Boyd McCandless Award for an Early Career Contribution to Developmental Psychology and the John Merck Scholars Award. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association for Psychological Science and the American Psychological Association, and President of the Cognitive Development Society.

John A. List is the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. He received his B.S. in economics at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and Ph.D. in economics at the University of Wyoming. List joined the UChicago faculty in 2005, and served as Chairman of the Department of Economics from 2012-2018. Prior to joining the University of Chicago, he was a professor at the University of Central Florida, University of Arizona, and University of Maryland.

List was elected a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011 and a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 2015. He is currently the Visiting Robert F. Hartsook Chair in Fundraising at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. He received the Arrow Prize for Senior Economists in 2008, the Kenneth Galbraith Award in 2010, the Yrjo Jahnsson Lecture Prize in 2012, the Klein Lecture Prize in 2016, and the Hartsook Growing Philanthropy Award in 2017. He received an honorary doctorate from Tilburg University in 2014 and from the University of Ottawa in 2017. John was also named a Top 50 Innovator in the Non-Profit Times for 2015 and 2016 for his work on charitable giving. He served in the White House on the Council of Economic Advisers from 2002-2003 and is a Research Associate at the NBER, a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), a University Fellow at Resources for the Future (RFF), and a University Fellow at Tilburg University in the Netherlands.

His research focuses on questions in microeconomics, with a particular emphasis on using field experiments to address both positive and normative issues. For decades his field experimental research has focused on issues related to the inner-workings of markets, the effects of various incentives schemes on market equilibria and allocations, how behavioral economics can augment the standard economic model, on early childhood education and interventions, and most recently on the gender earnings gap in the gig economy (using evidence from rideshare drivers).

His research includes over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and several published books, including the 2013 international best-seller, The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and the Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life (with Uri Gneezy).

Katherine Baicker, a leading scholar in the economic analysis of health policy, commenced as Dean and the Emmett Dedmon Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy on August 15, 2017.

Baicker’s research focuses primarily on the factors that drive the distribution, generosity, and effectiveness of public and private health insurance, with a particular focus on the effect of health system reform.  She is currently one of the leaders of a research program investigating the many effects of expanding health insurance coverage in the context of a randomized Medicaid expansion in Oregon. Her research has been published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Health Affairs, JAMA, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Before coming to the University of Chicago, Baicker was the C. Boyden Gray Professor of Health Economics in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She has served as Chair of the Massachusetts Group Insurance Commission; Chair of the Board of Directors of AcademyHealth; Commissioner on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission; and a nonresident senior fellow of the Brookings Institution. From 2005-2007, she served as a Senate-confirmed Member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, where she played a leading role in the development of health policy.

Baicker earned her B.A. in economics from Yale and her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard.

Madhav Rajan is Dean of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and George Pratt Shultz Professor of Accounting. His primary area of research interest is the economics-based analysis of management accounting issues, especially as they relate to the choice of internal control and performance systems in firms. He has carried out analytical, empirical, and field-based research on the role of information in incentive contracting, the value of nonfinancial and subjective performance measures, and the structural properties and usefulness of common financial ratios.

Before joining Booth, Rajan spent 16 years on the faculty of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business where he was the Robert K. Jaedicke Professor of Accounting, with a courtesy appointment in the Law School. He served as senior associate dean for academic affairs from 2010-2016, overseeing the school’s MBA program. From 2002-2010, he was area coordinator for the accounting faculty group. Previously, he served on the faculty at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, from 1990-2001.

Rajan received his Bachelor’s degree in Commerce from the University of Madras, India, and an MS in Accounting, an MS in Industrial Administration, and a PhD in Accounting from Carnegie Mellon University.

Thomas J. Miles is the Dean and Clifton R. Musser Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School.

Professor Miles is a leading scholar of criminal justice and judicial behavior and an expert in a wide range of contemporary issues such as race and immigration enforcement. He has been widely published in economics and legal journals, with extensive expertise on such varied topics as judicial diversity, immigration, mail fraud, and wiretapping. His work makes creative use of the tools of law and economics—an approach that originated at the Law School, which maintains leadership in the field through such initiatives as the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics. Frequently, Miles’ work uses the methods of law and economics to investigate social questions not conventionally thought to fall within that field, such as his recent work with Adam Cox at New York University School of Law that examined how African-American judges tended to decide voting rights cases differently than white judges and that the presence of an African-American judge on a judicial panel also tended to influence how white judges decided the case. Their research was the first to find robust statistical evidence that the racial identity of judges matters in how judicial panels decide cases, and highlighted the importance of diversity on the bench.

Miles received his PhD in economics from the University of Chicago and his JD cum laude from Harvard Law School. Upon graduation, he served as a law clerk to the Hon. Jay S. Bybee of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. From 2005 to 2013, Miles was an editor of the Journal of Legal Studies. He graduated summa cum laude with a BA in political science and economics from Tufts University.

Vikas Dimble is Assistant Director of Research and Strategy for the TCD and Content Editor for Ideas for India (I4I). Prior to that, he was consultant to the World Bank. He has also worked as India Country Economist for International Growth Centre (IGC) at London School of Economics and as a Research Associate at J-PAL, research centre at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Vikas completed his Masters from the University of Sussex and his undergraduate degree from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai and School of Social Sciences and Psychology, Victoria University, Melbourne.

As the Manager of Communications and Outreach, Subhojit works towards augmenting TCD’s branding, communication, and advocacy strategies, disseminating a broad range of research products to trigger a change in government policies and programs. His core responsibility includes promotion of dialogue and interaction with diverse set of audience by translating TCD’s research work and leveraging multiple platforms. Over the course of his career, he has worked with media houses and research organizations. Prior to TCD, he was a journalist with DownToEarth—Asia’s premier fortnightly on the politics of environment and development. He is passionate about literature, international movies, and exploring new geographies.

Aalia heads the India based operations and grants management for TCD. She has a multi-cultural-organizational experience by virtue of having worked with Canada’s International Development Research Centre, Ford Foundation (India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka), GE Healthcare, and American Express. At TCD, she works closely with the Country Director to create efficient administrative infrastructure, and also with researchers—both in India and the US—to ensure all policies and procedures are adhered to.  An MBA in Operations and Financial Management from IIM-Calcutta, she brings with her years of demonstrated experience in project, staff, and budget management. When not at work, she prefers to read multilingual literature, Urdu poetry, and watch movies. She loves to travel and interact with people. She is passionate about vintage cars, gadgets, and computer games.

As Operations Assistant, Sangeeta supports financial and administrative operations, along with the ancillary activities at TCD. Providing end-to-end support for activities pertaining to financial and programmatic grant reporting and ensuring accuracy and efficiency in processes is her key responsibility. With an experience of working as a finance professional across diverse sectors, ranging from health care to hospitality and IT, Sangeeta has a strong understanding of financial and governance requirements. She works alongside the Operations Manager to resolve procedural issues and suggests ways of making them more efficient.

Sayantan is a Program Lead at TCD and manages projects on air quality and other environmental issues. He has experience of working on climate change, air pollution and energy issues in the international, national and sub-national context for over eight years. Before joining TCD, he led Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) programs on air quality and climate resilience in India. Prior to this he was a Senior Climate Change Adviser at the British High Commission, New Delhi, where he focussed on international climate negotiations and led work around catalyzing political and business leadership to promote low-carbon and climate-resilient growth in India. He has also had a stint with a consulting firm, where he worked on carbon trading, HCFC phase-out and ODS destruction related issues. He has a Master’s degree in Environmental Science from The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) University, New Delhi. Sayantan is passionate about football, and supports Arsenal. He loves going on weekend getaways to the Himalayas.

Emily Cheng, Senior Finance Manager, oversees the TCD’s financial operations in both the U.S. and India. She has been with the University of Chicago for over 13 years and possesses extensive experience in University operations, human resources, and finance. She is a certified notary and holds two master’s degrees from Benedictine University in Business Administration (MBA) and Management and Organizational Behavior (MSMOB). When not at work, she can usually be found on an ice rink. Emily has been playing the sport of ice hockey since middle school and is very passionate about all things Chicago sports especially the local hockey team, the Chicago Blackhawks.

Nicole is the Director of Programs at TCD, working to coordinate all TCD programs across the India and US teams. Prior to her current role, Nicole managed an international social impact consulting program based at the University of Chicago. She has over 10 years of experience in the international non profit and development sectors, kicking off her work in this area as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco. Nicole completed her masters from DePaul University in Chicago.