The Team

Andrew Bell

Associate Professor

Andrew is the Schleifer Family Professor of Sustainability in the Department of Global Development at Cornell University.

He is interested in pro-poor development, as a vehicle to just and inclusive environmental stewardship. Work in his lab emphasizes shared understanding across partners and participants in the development of technical knowledge.

Projects past, current, and future emphasize the use of behavioral experiments to understand and represent decision-making, and agent-based models to examine the consequences of these decisions at scale. Domains of interest span rural to urban livelihoods decision-making, agricultural technology adoption, irrigation, and human-wildlife conflict.

Nic Choquette-Levy

Post-doctoral Researcher

Nic Choquette-Levy (he/him) is currently completed his PhD in Public Policy and International Affairs at Princeton University before joining the ELM Lab. Nic’s PhD research integrates agent-based modelling, game theory, and survey methods to assess the impacts of potential policy interventions, including weather-based crop insurance and cash transfers, on farmer climate adaptation outcomes in South Asia. As part of the Bell Lab, Nic is excited to further develop participatory modelling techniques in the context of environmental change in Senegal, and to build frameworks for robust decision-making in the agricultural sector under climate uncertainty. Nic is originally from Montreal, Canada, and obtained undergraduate degrees in biomedical engineering and international relations at the University of Southern California, and a Master’s degree in Energy and Environmental Systems at the University of Calgary.

Adham Badawy

PhD Student

Adham's research interests lie in developing decision support systems and tools for policy makers to ensure equitable and sustainable water use and allocation. Before that, he was a researcher at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) working on water productivity and water governance. Prior to IWMI Adham worked at Zewail City of Science and Technology, Egypt, as an assistant teacher of hydrology and supervised several undergraduate students. He also completed an internship on the Water Conflict Chronology at the Pacific Institute, USA. Adham has a background in Water and Environmental Engineering from Cairo University. He also completed a master’s degree on water management and governance at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Netherlands.

Bright Olunusi

Phd Student

I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It’s easy. Just click “Edit Text” or doubBright Olunusi is a graduate of the premier University of Ibadan, Nigeria where she received a Bachelor of Science degree in Wildlife and Ecotourism Management. As an undergraduate research fellow, she worked on a couple of academic works that critically examined the market structure of the bushmeat trade in Oyo State, Nigeria. She is currently a newly admitted Ph.D. student in the Department of Earth and Environment, Boston University and part of Andrew Reid Bell’s lab. Based on her previous experience as an intern at Kainji and Okomu National parks in Nigeria and part of NGOs like Unibadan Environmental Conservation Group, Brighthas developed interests in biodiversity conservation, sustainable livelihoods and human well-being. She has a strong interest in how humans and biodiversity (wildlife) interact, the importance of such interactions and most especially the conflicts that arise due to some human stressors such as land-use change and habitat fragmentation, climate change, poaching and wildlife trade. Asides from studying, she loves to meet new people, bake, participate in outreaches and have fun.le click me to add your own content and make changes to the font. I’m a great place for you to tell a story and let your users know a little more about you.

Sasha Gilmore

PhD Student

Sasha A. Gilmore (she/her) received a B.A. (2021) in Environmental Studies and Geography from Dartmouth College. She was a member of Ross A. Virginia’s arctic lab for four years studying Greenlandic plants and soils, specifically nutrient cycling. She is now a first-year Ph.D. student in the Earth & Environment Department at Boston University. She is a member of Andrew Bell’s lab where her interests fall under climate change and anthropogenic impacts, both environmentally and socially. Her dissertation is planned to focus on climate extremes and community mitigation/adaptation techniques. She is also a part of the BU Urban program, whose mission is to “prepare Ph.D. students to tackle urban environmental challenges using interdisciplinary methods and a co-production approach centered on partnerships with governments, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector”. Growing up in Los Angeles, she has always been interested in issues regarding large cities and their effects on human health.

Dorsa Mohammadi

PhD Candidate

My research uses remote sensing technology (satellite, airborne, etc.) to monitor Earth’s surface changes, such as land cover and land use change, forest disturbance, carbon cycle, time series analysis, vegetation, and land-cover change with remote sensing applications. My research project has been funded by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration).

Alumni

Naeemullah Salarzai (MA, 2024)

John Leeah (MA, 2023)