Aya received her B.S. degree from the University of Michigan in 2023, where she double-majored in Neuroscience and Political Science with Honors. Previously, she has interned at NASA in the Heliophysics Division and in the Office of International and Interagency Relations.

Aya is interested in pursuing a PhD in the behavioral sciences. She recently wrote a senior honors thesis related to conspiracy theory belief in science and is particularly interested in concepts related to the psychology of misinformation, especially on scientific issues like climate change. Her research interests also broadly include morality, decision-making, judgement, and social norms.

Nusrat Molla is currently a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at the Andlinger Center. Her work focuses on using dynamical systems modeling, both theoretical and coupled with empirical qualitative methods, to understand the social and political dynamics of sustainability transitions in resource extraction and governance. She is particularly interested in how entrenched institutions inhibit sustainability transitions, and the mechanisms at various scales by which they are transformed. Her current project explores narratives and pathways for post-extractive futures in coal mining communities in Central Appalachia.

Nusrat earned her Ph.D. from Land, Air, and Water Resources at UC Davis in 2023, and her B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley.

Personal website: https://nusratmolla.com

Anandita Sabherwal (Ana) is a postdoctoral research associate at the Behavioral Science for Policy Lab (Princeton University) and the Social Influence and Social Change lab (Boston College). Her research focusses on the system-individual nexus of climate action. Her work asks: How do institutions influence individual psychology and behavior on complex collective challenges like climate change? How can individuals be empowered to affect change in these very institutions? And how can individual and institutional efforts be coordinated to drive transformative change?

To seek these answers, Ana’s research focusses on key psychological and behavioral concepts of social influence, behavioral spillover, organizational culture, and collective action. She hopes that her work can help catalyze real-world change, especially aiding organizations, policymakers, and activists.

Ana obtained a PhD in Psychological and Behavioral Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. Funded by a PhD scholarship from the Grantham Research Institution on Climate Change and Environment, her thesis investigated social and societal influences on climate action. Previously, she completed an MPhil at Cambridge University (UK), where she was supported by a Cambridge Trust Scholarship and researched the Greta Thunberg Effect.

Sandra Geiger is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University.

Her work focuses broadly on pluralistic ignorance—inaccurate beliefs about social norms. Sandra uses survey, experimental, and field methods across countries to understand how these inaccurate beliefs can be corrected to ignite change for environmental protection. As a member of the Behavioral Science for Policy Lab, she contributes to conducting Princeton University’s annual Net Zero Stakeholder Survey.

Before joining Princeton University, she completed her doctoral studies at the University of Vienna (Austria) and received a Research Master’s degree in Psychology from the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands). She is also a Research Fellow in Environmental Psychology (https://env-psy.univie.ac.at/) at the University of Vienna and affiliated with the Junior Researcher Programme (https://jrp.pscholars.org/).

Jack L. Markowitz is a PhD student in Public Affairs (Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy) at Princeton University. His work focuses on the relationship between public policy, environmental justice, and political values and participation in various international locations—particularly in extractive and post-extractive contexts.

Prior to attending Princeton, Jack graduated with a master’s degree in environmental science from Yale School of the Environment. A qualitative and mixed-methods scholar, his master’s thesis examines the socio-environmental implications of the 2022 Constitutional Convention in Chile and addresses the impacts of the proposed constitution’s rejection. Jack holds a Bachelor of Science from Furman University, where he studied Sustainability Science, Spanish Language and Literature, and Latin American and LatinX Studies. His undergraduate thesis maps ecosystem services globally and identifies policy mechanisms that contribute to different levels of ecosystem service provisioning. Jack additionally holds an Associate of Arts from Greenville Technical College.

Holly is a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment researching pathways to broad public support for utility-scale renewable energy projects across the US. Her work explores the formation of local and regional stakeholder coalitions and the narratives they form around a clean energy transition in relation to economic revitalization, labor organization, and notions of procedural and distributional justice.

Drawing on her interdisciplinary social science background, Holly is interested in how different actors define and envision a ‘just transition’, working to identify policy frameworks that enable rapid, equitable decarbonization.

Holly earned her Ph.D. from the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, where her dissertation research explored social-behavioral drivers of household resource

Jordana is a PhD student in the Psychology Department at Princeton University.

Her research interests include environmental decision making, social norms, corporate and organizational behavior, social change, and computer-mediated communication. With BSPL, Jordana is studying corporate action of climate change and social norm mechanisms.

Prior to joining Princeton, Jordana was a Business Consultant in the finance and consumer industries; her work focused on customer analytics and technology. She was also a Research Coordinator and Data Scientist with the Mindell Lab at Saint Joseph’s University, where she worked on a range of topics related to adult and baby sleep behavior. Jordana receive her bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth in Quantitative Social Science and Environmental Economics.

Jeff Lees is an Associate Research Scholar in the Behavioral Science for Policy Lab. He researches the psychology of inaccurate beliefs and their consequences for political, organizational, and social life. His past work has developed interventions for combating false polarization across the globe, examined the role ideology play in driving belief in misinformation, and advanced methodological and statistical techniques for measuring belief (in)accuracy. As a member of the Behavioral Science for Policy Lab in the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Jeff researches how (mis)perceptions of social norms and the true attitudes of others contributes to climate inaction, and how we can leverage our psychological understanding of such misperceptions to engender greater collective action on climate change.

Jeff completed his PhD in organizational behavior and social psychology at Harvard University in 2020, and prior to joining the BSPL was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub. He is also a Fellow at George Washington University’s Institute for Data, Democracy, & Politics, where he collaborates on research to combat anti-democracy misinformation.

Contact: jeffrey.m.lees@gmail.com
Personal Website: https://www.jeffreymlees.com

Rohini is a PhD student in the Psychology Department at Princeton University.

Her research interests lie in the field of behavioral economics, with her past work focusing on judgment and decision-making processes in health contexts. Currently at BSPL, she is working on applying the psychology of social norms to promote sustainable behaviors and curb environmentally damaging trends. Rohini is also largely interested in studying motivation, goal pursuit, and closing attitude-behavior gaps in various contexts.

Prior to joining Princeton, Rohini received her B.S. degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she double-majored in Cognitive Science and Economics.

Personal Website: www.rohinimajumdar.com

Kris is currently an incoming PhD student in the Psychology Department at Princeton University. His specific research interests include media portrayal of climate change, motivated cognition, and climate change risk perception.

Prior to joining Princeton, he received a M.A. in the Social Sciences with a focus in Computational Social Sciences from the University of Chicago in 2018 and a BA in Psychology from Stephen F. Austin State University in 2017. Previously, he worked as a research assistant and lab manager at Harvard University.

Pooja Vijay Ramamurthi is a Ph.D. student at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Her research is within the Science, Technology and Environmental Policy program.  

She is interested in understanding individual and community decision-making processes focused on the energy and environment. Through her work, she plans to use behavioral science to formulate policies to hasten the creation of sustainable, affordable and reliable energy pathways in developing countries. 

Prior to coming to Princeton, she worked at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) in India. She holds a double Masters degree in Sustainable Energy from the Royal institute of Technology, Sweden and Instituto Superior Tecnico, Portugal on a European Commission scholarship.

Contact: pvr@exchange.Princeton.edu

Matthew Sisco is a postdoctoral scientist at the BSPL. His interests are at the intersection of behavioral science, data science, and environmental problems. Matthew works on developing data science methods for use in behavioral science, and applies these methods to studying behavioral aspects of environmental problems.

Contact: ms1548@princeton.edu

Calvin is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (STEP) program at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs.

In his research, Calvin investigates the sociopolitical dynamics of energy transitions in the U.S., China, and Germany. Ultimately, he aims to facilitate a more nuanced understanding of demand-side energy policies across these three countries and improve the management of sociopolitical responses in energy transitions.

Previously, Calvin worked as a power market reform intern at RMI, an energy and environmental policy intern at China Policy, and a transportation system analyst at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Calvin holds a Master’s in China Studies from Peking University and a B.S. in Business Administration from Ohio State University.

Melissa is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Science, Technology, & Environmental Policy cluster at the School of Public & International Affairs. She focuses on climate policy and behavior, with particular interests in interactions between scales of government and individual decision-making in response to local environmental policies. She is interested in tying these theoretical topics to applied research on coastal resilience, managed retreat, and building/transportation infrastructure in the context of emergency preparedness.

Prior to joining the Princeton community, Melissa worked for 5 years as the first Sustainability Program Manager in the Office of Sustainability at Swarthmore College, where she developed innovative programs related to the climate crisis, zero waste, and environmental justice. During this time, she also completed a part-time MSc in Sustainable Urban Development at the University of Oxford. Her master’s thesis applied urban governance theories to strategic risk planning for sustainability, with a case study of the Philadelphia metropolitan area. She previously worked as a Research Assistant at the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University, and holds a BA in Psychology from Swarthmore.

Contact: mtier@princeton.edu

Eunha Choi is a Research Assistant of the Behavioral Science for Policy Lab. She was a former Co-Lab Manager/Research Coordinator at BSPL from June 2021 to September 2022.

Eunha graduated with a Master’s degree in Psychology from New York University in 2021. Previously, she was a Research Assistant at the Consumer Well-being Lab at the Stern School of Business and Social Perception, Action, and Motivation Lab at NYU, where she examined various social and psychological factors in business, political, and environmental domains.

She plans on pursuing a Ph.D. in Behavioral Sciences and Marketing field, particularly in consumer behavior. She is navigating her research topics at the intersection of behavioral science, social psychology, and consumer behavior, focusing on judgment and decision making, motivation, stereotypes, and preferences.

Eunha completed her Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration at Sogang University in South Korea, and previously worked as an Associate Manager at a retail company before pursuing a graduate program at NYU. By leveraging academic backgrounds and professional experiences, she hopes to explore how behavioral research and studies can make practical approaches to solve real-world questions and eventually develop into real-world policies and solutions.

Contact:eunha.choi.ceh@gmail.com

Jongnam is a rising Sophomore at Princeton University dabbling here and there, primarily interested in the intersection of computer science and the social sciences.

Jongnam joined the BSPL to gain a better understanding of how computational tools can be applied in cutting-edge psychology/policy research. At the BSPL, he will be employing text mining to analyze surveys and compare computer-based identifications with human-based ones.

Sana Asifriyaz is a rising sophomore at Princeton University. She intends to major in Psychology and earn a certificate in South Asian Studies. One of the phenomena she is interested in studying is the intersection of social psychology and the sociopolitical landscape in India.
At BSPL, Sana is thrilled to learn more about the rhetoric of climate change agendas and the way in which the public and private sectors perceive them. She intends to work as a data analyst on projects that seek to understand the impact of climate change coalitions’ agendas on companies partnering with these coalitions, particularly in terms of their decision-making.

Lindsay is a master’s student at the University of Pennsylvania studying Behavioral and Decision Sciences. Before graduate school, Lindsay studied Brain and Cognitive Science and Water Sustainability at the University of Rochester and worked for many years in the environmental non-profit sector on watershed education and community outreach. Combining her passions in cognition and the environment, her work focuses on uncovering the social and psychological factors underpinning environmental actions. After graduating from UPenn in 2022, she will pursue a career developing creative and meaningful ways to spur environmental change using behavioral science tools.

During her time at BSPL, Lindsay aims to learn more about quantitative and qualitative studies of environmental norms. She is particularly interested in the interplay between consumer and corporate sustainability and perceptions of differential responsibility and control. Within the lab, she looks forward to assisting in a meta-analysis of social norms and assisting in designing and conducting studies on social norms and sustainability.

Katherine Brubaker is a High Meadows Environmental Institute intern with the Behavioral Science for Policy Lab. A rising junior at Princeton University, Katherine is concentrating in the School of Public and International Affairs, with a focus on environmental policy. She is also working towards certificates in French and journalism. Katherine is excited to learn more about the intersection of policy and the environment while working at BSPL.

Zhaoran is a rising junior at Princeton University. Zhaoran is an architecture major who is also interested in Environmental Studies. In Zhaoran’s work with the BSPL, Zhaoran hopes to learn from and about the various actors and people who are involved in and affected by decision-making and project-planning, specifically in just transitions to net-zero futures.

Emily is currently a rising Junior studying Civil & Environmental Engineering with certificates in Latin American Studies, Environmental Studies, and Urban Studies. She was initially drawn to the Behavioral Science for Policy Lab due to its interdisciplinary approach to global environmental policies.
Previously, Emily has worked on a variety of research projects addressing housing inequality, anthropogenic influences on estuaries, and agrobiodiversity. She hopes to supplement her research in developing sustainable environmental protocols by understanding the behavioral and political mechanisms that ensure the success of these policies.
During her time at BSPL, Emily hopes to gain a better understanding of how to foster support for sustainable environmental initiatives on both the individual and societal levels. She is extremely interested in working to promote the normalization of renewable energies and assisting corporations find economically feasible ways to reduce their carbon footprint.

Danielle is a recent graduate from the University of Miami (UM) with double majors in Psychology and Studio Art and minors in Political Science, Philosophy, English Literature, and Management. At UM, she completed an honors thesis on the role of individual difference factors in shaping information processing and emotional responses to climate change messaging.

Danielle joined the BSPL due to her passion for conducting psychological research in the public interest, investigating the real-world major social dilemma of climate change. She is especially interested in applied social marketing and the psychology of communication in the context of climate change and sustainability. Within the lab, she currently assists in conducting a meta-analysis of social norms. She ultimately plans to pursue a PhD in social psychology.

Pranati has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi. She pursued her Master’s degree in Social Work with a specialization in Community Organisation and Development Practice from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. She has previously worked in social sector advisory at Belongg, as well as with NGOs such as Barefoot College, Jagori and Bandhua Mukti Morcha (Bonded Labour Liberation Front) in India. She has been involved in theater since her college days, and currently represents India in the Eurasia Theater Association. Pranati enjoys learning about themes across the spectrum of social sciences, especially from an intersectional perspective that takes into account different identities and positionalities. She strongly believes in the power of social science and the arts to bring about a nuanced change that is built on the ideals of social justice and compassion.

Through her work at BSPL, she seeks to study the intersection between behavioral science and policymaking.

Saikat is a senior undergraduate student at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur pursuing a major in Materials Science & Engineering with a minor in Biotechnology. At IITK, he works as a research assistant at Climate and Energy Policy Research Lab, IITK (CERPL) where he had previously worked on mapping discourse coalitions for climate change on Australian media data and that he is currently working on how Natural Language Processing techniques could be employed in climate policy research and contribute to society’s good at large.
As a part of BSPL, he is interested in understanding and illustrating the symbiosis between NLP and climate energy policy on a big dataset through data collection, text analysis and network analysis.

Phillip Jauregui is a summer research assistant at the Behavioral Science for Policy Lab (BSPL). Phil received a BA in Psychology and Philosophy from Claremont McKenna College in 2017 and M.A. in psychology from NYU in 2021. Primarily interested in the influence of culture, environment, and public policy on subjective well-being (SWB), Phil aims to Inform and survey public policy so as to augment SWB and substantiate policy reform. At the BPSL, Phil will assist in an ongoing meta-analysis of social norms so that researchers and policymakers may make norm interventions (e.g., encouraging pro-environmental behavior) more effective.

jauregui.phillip@gmail.com

Nicholas is a rising junior in the School Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He plans on getting a certificate in Environmental Studies and the History and Practice of Diplomacy. Nicholas is also a member of Princeton’s varsity swim team.

At the BSPL, Nicholas will be working on a project comparing behaviors & policy preferences related to Climate Change & COVID-19 in the United States.

Sneha has a Master’s degree in History and has previously worked in the offices of Indian Parliamentarians. Her interest in climate change and energy policy is a result of her time as legislative research assistant. She seeks to understand the role of stakeholders in policy making through her work at BSPL.

In her time at BSPL, Sneha seeks to observe and learn patterns of decision making by a number of actors within policy. She is looking forward to enhancing her understanding of processes of state-making while learning multiple methods of research.

Marcus Trenfield is an incoming first-year Ph.D. student in the Psychology Department at Boston College. He received his BA in Psychology from Harvard University. Marcus is broadly interested in studying the factors that promote and inhibit cooperative and prosocial behavior, particularly when addressing collective action problems. As a BSPL research assistant, Marcus is eager to assist with a metanalysis exploring the impact of social norms on social change.

Vaidehi has recently completed her master’s in Behavioral and Decision Sciences at University of Pennsylvania. She is a visiting scholar at Center of Social and Behavior Change, India and a Behavior Research Consultant at Rare. Her work primarily focuses on bringing in development and environmental impact through collective behavior change. Previously, she has worked as a consumer behavior specialist at Kantar India with a focus on rural consumer marketing. She has received her master’s and bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi.

At BSPL, Vaidehi aims to expand her knowledge on quantitative measures and gain practical experience of conducting experiments to apply evidence led approaches to policy and behavior change. She is especially interested in learning more about social norms and collective behavior dynamics and looks forward to assisting in a meta-analysis of social norms and designing and conducting experiments to study nuanced behavioral mechanisms.

Fiona Yang received a B.A. in Psychology and a B.A. in Mathematics from Oberlin College in 2022. She has done independent research regarding how social media impact the impression formation of strangers. Her research interests focus on how social media affect people’s attitudes and behaviors. She is currently hoping to study the psychological cause of involvement in cyberbullying.

During her time in BSPL, Fiona seeks to learn more about social norms and decision-making patterns. She is looking forward to being inspired by the variables making social norms more effective and hopes to find the solution to correct people’s misunderstandings of strangers through social media.

Lubna’s work lies at the intersection of ecological sustainability, social psychology, and digital innovation. She is particularly interested in understanding the drivers and promoters of (un)sustainable behavior and uncovering the knowledge-intention-action gaps in climate adaptation and mitigation. Her current work is centered in the Berlin-Brandenburg region of Germany, particularly with respect to the transport, construction, and energy sectors. She presently works with the Berlin Brandenburg Climate Change Center and was previously affiliated with the Centre for Entrepreneurship at the Technical University of Berlin. Lubna’s eclectic background also spans molecular biology, ecology, and industrial engineering, with previous research and work experience in and on turbulent and emerging contexts such as Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, Pakistan, Tunisia, and sub Saharan Africa. She studied at the Technical University of Berlin, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Jordan University of Science and Technology. She is also an avid stage performer and outdoors lover.

Email: lubna.rashid@tu-berlin.de
Website: www.lubnarashid.com

Astrid is an assistant professor at the School of Sustainability, Leuphana University Lueneburg, Germany. She is associated with the Harding Center for Risk Literacy at the University of Potsdam, Germany.

Astrid studies the cognitive and social mechanisms driving risk perception and decision-making under uncertainty. She explores those in the context of climate change, biodiversity loss as well as nuclear weapons and nuclear war. This includes the heuristics that individuals use to make decisions in face of challenges such as climate change and nuclear war.

Drawing on the science of science communication, her research also explores how risks and uncertainties can be communicated transparently and understandably. Her work aims to make citizens better able to deal with risk and uncertainty.

Email: astrid.kause@leuphana.de

Christoffer is currently a PhD visiting student in behavioral science at Princeton University. His research focus lays in the different dimensions of fiscal citizenship and incorporates, for example, contributions in the field of tax compliance.

After finishing his BA in business administration at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, and his MA in finance and accounting at Freie Universität Berlin, including an exchange semester at HEC Paris, Christoffer started his PhD in behavioral science at Freie Universität Berlin.

Jacopo is Assistant Professor at the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering of Politecnico di Milano and Affiliated Scientist at the RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment (EIEE). He is an applied microeconomist and his research interests lie in the intersection between development, environmental and behavioural economics. At BSPL, he studies the role of social norms and behavioural spillovers in resource conservation and pro-social behaviour.

Valentina Bosetti is a professor at Bocconi University teaching environmental and climate change economics. She is a research fellow at the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change.

Valentina has also been collaborating for Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei from 2003 to 2018. She has been a visiting fellow at the Princeton Environmental Institute in 2009/2010 and she was a Fellow at CASBS at Stanford in 2014/2015.

Valentina was one of the lead authors of the 5th AR IPCC (2014) and she will serve again for the 6th AR. Valentina was president of the Italian Association of Environmental and Resource Economics (IAERE) and council member of the European one (EAERE). She was the PI of a ERC Starting Grant on Innovation and clean technologies (ICARUS) and she currently is PI ERC Starting Grant on Uncertainty and Climate Change (RISICO).

Contact: valentina.bosetti@eiee.org

Sara’s current research focuses on understanding how social norms affect individual and collective behaviors (especially in environmental contexts) and how this influence might vary depending on several factors, such as the source of norm information or the agency of the individual in determining her institutional context.

A second line of research is aimed at developing a comprehensive decision making framework, which extends beyond rational choice and brings together theories from various disciplines and levels of detail, in order to better characterize decisions in complex ecological contexts.

Previously, she completed a Ph.D. at New York University, where she developed computational models to capture learning and decisions in foraging contexts, characterized by inter temporal tradeoffs and opportunity costs.

Contact: saraconstantino@princeton.edu

Giovanna is Associate Professor at the University of Milan and head of the research area on Behavioural Science at RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment. Previously, she worked at Milan Polytechnic and the University of Birmingham. She holds a PhD in Economics from Bocconi University, with a thesis on natural resource conservation in developing countries, and an MSc in Development Management from LSE. During her PhD, Giovanna was a research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, Paris School of Economics and University of Zurich. Giovanna’s research uses laboratory, survey and field experiments to investigate key drivers of pro-social behavior, such as institutions, norms, and leadership structures. Her recent work has focused on the analysis of the impact of behavioral energy efficiency programs.

Saara Ehlert is a Visiting Student Research Collaborator from the Radboud University in the Netherlands. Back home, she in the process of finishing her Research Master’s degree in Behavioral Science. Before this, Saara has obtained a bachelor’s degree from the Faculty of Social and Political Science at the University of Helsinki, with a specialization in Social and Cultural Anthropology.

In her research Saara focuses on social norms and social identity, and the possibility of leveraging these to further pro-environmental decision-making. She is particularly interested in research that can be used to inform policy decisions, and that reaches beyond the borders of WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) countries. As part of the Behavioral Science for Policy Lab, Saara will participate in the planning of a cross-cultural panel study regarding social norms and pro-environmental behavior and investigate the relationship between pro-environmental decision-making and personal moral dimensions.

Contact: saara.ehlert@outlook.com

Lukas is a senior researcher and lecturer at ETH Zurich and the Oeschger Center for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern. His main research interests lie in climate policy analysis, political economy, and political psychology. In particular, Lukas is interested in the nexus of climate and food policymaking. He enjoys combining different methodological approaches, such as survey and field experiments, econometrics, discourse network analysis, machine learning, and process tracing. Based on his research, Lukas regularly consults policymakers on policy pathways for climate change mitigation and food system transformation. He is the founder of the non-profit organization NAHhaft–Institute for sustainable food strategies.

Lukas received his PhD at ETH Zurich and holds a Master of Public Policy from the Hertie School of Governance (Berlin) with a focus on Political Economy and Policy Analysis. He also studied at the University of Masstricht, the University of Seville, and the Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance (Berlin).
At BSPL, he studies the role of feedback effects in accelerating social norm, narrative, and policy change for climate change mitigation and food system transformation.

In his free time, Lukas enjoys playing with his two sons, hiking and dancing tango.

Contact: lukas.fesenfeld@unibe.ch
https://lukasfesenfeld.com/

Renato Frey is a cognitive psychologist studying how people make decisions under risk and uncertainty. In his research, he is particularly interested in the construct of risk preference: How stable is a person’s risk preference across different situations and time? How can we best measure the cognitive processes underlying risk preference and interindividual differences therein? And to what extent is risk preference predictive for how people deal with the daily risks of our modern world?

To answer these questions, Renato uses quantitative methods (psychometric, cognitive, and predictive modeling) and implements both lab experiments and ecological assessments. Renato received his PhD from the University of Basel (Switzerland), spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, and now is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Cognitive and Decision Sciences (University of Basel) and a Swiss National Science Foundation Ambizione fellow. He is currently spending six months as a visiting scholar at Princeton University.

Contact: rfrey@princeton.edu
http://renatofrey.net

Chris Greig, is the Theodora D. and William H. Walton III Senior Research Scientist at Princeton University’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. He has a PhD in Chemical Engineering and is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE). His academic career follows almost 3 decades in industry initially as a company founder and then at senior executive roles across the energy and resources sectors on 4 continents. His research intersects engineering, business, and social sciences to bridge the gap between energy scenarios and real-world execution. He co-led Princeton’s influential Net-Zero America (2021) study and is currently co-leading similar efforts in Australia, and Asia.

Rohit grew up in India and graduated from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi with a major in electrical engineering. After briefly working in different technology based research roles, he felt his calling lay in public services. He was selected as an Indian Administrative Services officer in 2006. He has worked as the district magistrate, which is the head of District Government in India, in six different districts. As the district magistrate, he was responsible for direct supervision of more than twenty government departments, maintaining law and order in the jurisdiction, and coordinating with multiple agencies to ensure the holistic development of district. He passionately believes in promoting and executing policies that protect the environment along with economic development. While studying for MPP program at Princeton in 2019, he rediscovered his passion for research and scholarship. He hopes to continue his journey of developing skills for contributing towards a sustainable future with the STEP PhD program at the institute. His research is focused on understanding the motivations of different stakeholders in the Indian electicity sector, and leveraging this knowledge for devising policies that can help in faster decarbonization of the sector.

Ireri is a PhD candidate at Bocconi University in the department of Social and Political Sciences and an affiliate at the RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment. Her research focuses on the energy transition, including the drivers of public attitudes towards environmental and energy policies and the distributional consequences of environmental regulation. She is currently studying how macro-level energy shocks, energy prices, and individuals’ characteristics influence preferences towards decarbonization policies and environmental concern. Furthermore, she is interested in analyzing how the impacts of the energy transition vary across socio-demographic groups and regional contexts and in studying factors that influence individuals’ perception of equity and fairness of the energy transition. Ireri received her bachelor’s degree in Economics from Stanford University and her master’s degree in Economics from the University of Mannheim.

Stephanie Mertens is a doctoral student in the Consumer Decision and Sustainable Behavior Lab at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Her research focuses on the behavioral aspects of sustainability and investigates the psychological determinants of purchasing decisions in the energy domain. Specifically, her work examines how varying expressions or translations of energy consumption can enhance decision making on a cognitive and behavioral level.

At BSPL, Stephanie investigates the effects of attribute translations and other choice architectural interventions on decision making across different consumer groups and population segments. This comparative research aims to identify individual differences in responsiveness to interventions and to provide clear recommendations for the development and implementation of energy policies.

Prior to her doctoral studies at the University of Geneva, Stephanie received a B.Sc. in psychology from Utrecht University, the Netherlands, and a M.Sc. in social and cognitive psychology from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Contact: stephanie.mertens@unige.ch

Ria Mukerji is a PhD student in the department of geography at the University of New Mexico (UNM). She received her bachelors in environmental studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz and her masters in geography from the department of geography and anthropology at Louisiana State University (LSU) (Geaux Tigers!).
Mukerji’s work focuses on the political ecology of hazards. At LSU she focused on the paradoxes between safe vs. economic development when it comes to floodplain management, focusing on the devastating floods of 2016 in Louisiana. At UNM she is working on a comparative study between headwater dependent mountain river systems in northern New Mexico and Latin America. She is interested in the intersection of risk and hazard perception and indigeneity.

Silvia is a PhD student in Public Policy and Administration at Bocconi University and Junior Research Fellow at the IEFE Centre for Research on Energy and Environmental Economics and Policy of Bocconi University.
She investigates individual perception and decision-making in the context of climate change and environmental issues, applying both quantitative and qualitative methods.

In 2018 she is visiting Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. At BSPL she intends to apply behavioural perspectives to understand how social norms shape environmental decisions and behaviour.

Contact: silvia.pianta@phd.unibocconi.it

Trained in Political Science (University Konstanz/Germany, University St.Gallen/Switzerland), Adrian focuses in his research on business’s and citizens’ roles in energy and climate politics. Specifically, his work investigates how firms and business associations shape citizens’ views on energy and the climate, and how they influence the outcomes of policy processes.

Adrian’s prior research has capitalized on direct democratic votes to study the complexity of preference construction in a real world setting. At BSPL, he applies experimental methods to gain a deeper understanding of the psychological underpinnings of social norm perceptions.

Contact: adrian.rinscheid@unisg.ch

Maja Schlüter is an associated professor at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden, where she leads the SES-LINK group that is based on the ERC starting grant SESLINK and the ERC consolidator grant MuSES. Maja’s research focuses on the dynamics of social-ecological systems, particularly how feedbacks between human action and ecological consequences can lead to (un)sustainable social and ecological outcomes. Maja is particularly interested in how the diversity of human motivations and behavior, e.g. of resource users or political actors, impacts sustainability and resilience of human-environment systems. She combines agent-based modeling with empirical and experimental research to identify social-ecological mechanisms that may explain phenomena such as fishery collapse, poverty traps or policy adaptation to environmental change. 
Prior to her position at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Maja has worked at the UFZ – Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research Leipzig/Halle, in the lab of Simon Levin at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University and the Leibniz Centre for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Berlin. 

Contact: maja.schlueter@su.se

Nanda’s research focuses on understanding and formalizing of human group behavior in and on social-ecological systems. She uses agent-based modelling (computational simulations) to integrate and formalize case or expert knowledge, social theory and connecting to other methods to contribute to a deeper understanding.

She works as a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC). Currently she works on synthesizing knowledge using agent-based modelling, i.e. comparing and exploring fishery case studies and interventions. Previously, Nanda worked in the SES-LINK project focusing on the role of human behavior in diverse natural resource management projects. 

Contact: nanda.wijermans@su.se

Maxim is the Lab Manager of the Behavioral Science for Policy Lab. He received a M.S. in Human Decision Science from Maastricht University in 2021 and a B.A. in Psychology from Amherst College in 2019. During the 2019/2020 academic term he was an Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) Exchange Fellow at ENS Paris where he took courses in their Cognitive Sciences Department.

Maxim is interested in pursuing a PhD in the behavioral sciences and is particularly interested in studying decision making in applied contexts. His specific research interests include partisanship, beliefs about the future, social norms, social policy, and the environment.

Contact:md4908@princeton.edu

Elisabeth Krueger is a Postdoctoral research associate at the Princeton Environmental Institute, affiliated with PEI’s Center for BioComplexity and the Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment. Elisabeth studies how human-environment interactions are mediated through infrastructure and institutions, especially in urban areas. She investigates the effect that different urban designs and governance strategies can have on local and global sustainability outcomes. She models trade-offs between security, resilience and sustainability across scales, as well as across critical service sectors, such as water and energy supply.

Her interests cover the mechanisms of, and emergent spatial and temporal patterns resulting from human-environment interactions, as well as cognitive processes that determine the perceptions of risks and benefits at the human-environment interface.

Elisabeth completed her PhD in the Interdisciplinary Ecological Sciences and Engineering Program at Purdue University (Indiana) in 2019, and previously worked as a research manager at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ in Germany.

Matthew Sisco is a postdoctoral scientist at the BSPL. His interests are at the intersection of behavioral science, data science, and environmental problems. Matthew works on developing data science methods for use in behavioral science, and applies these methods to studying behavioral aspects of environmental problems.

Contact: ms1548@princeton.edu

Johanna was a former Lab Manager at BSPL. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2018, with a degree in Economics and minors in Environmental Studies and Fine Arts. Previously, she was a Research Assistant at the Schweitzer Lab at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where she worked on a range of topics relating to emotions and decision-making.

Johanna is interested in pursuing a PhD in a behavioral field and is particularly interested in behavioral research in applied contexts. Specifically, her research interests include decision making under uncertainty, intertemporal choice, group behavior, social norms, prejudice, gender, and the environment. Through her work at BSPL, she is interested in exploring how behavioral research can generate effective and meaningful approaches for real world policy solutions.

As of Fall 2021, Johanna is doing a PhD in Behavioral Decision Making at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Contact: jmattnavarro@gmail.com

Pooja Vijay Ramamurthi is a Ph.D. student at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Her research is within the Science, Technology and Environmental Policy program.  

She is interested in understanding individual and community decision-making processes focused on the energy and environment. Through her work, she plans to use behavioral science to formulate policies to hasten the creation of sustainable, affordable and reliable energy pathways in developing countries. 

Prior to coming to Princeton, she worked at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) in India. She holds a double Masters degree in Sustainable Energy from the Royal institute of Technology, Sweden and Instituto Superior Tecnico, Portugal on a European Commission scholarship.

Contact: pvr@exchange.Princeton.edu

Rohini is a PhD student in the Psychology Department at Princeton University.

Her research interests lie in the field of behavioral economics, with her past work focusing on judgment and decision-making processes in health contexts. Currently at BSPL, she is working on applying the psychology of social norms to promote sustainable behaviors and curb environmentally damaging trends. Rohini is also largely interested in studying motivation, goal pursuit, and closing attitude-behavior gaps in various contexts.

Prior to joining Princeton, Rohini received her B.S. degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she double-majored in Cognitive Science and Economics.

Personal Website: www.rohinimajumdar.com

Jeff Lees is an Associate Research Scholar in the Behavioral Science for Policy Lab. He researches the psychology of inaccurate beliefs and their consequences for political, organizational, and social life. His past work has developed interventions for combating false polarization across the globe, examined the role ideology play in driving belief in misinformation, and advanced methodological and statistical techniques for measuring belief (in)accuracy. As a member of the Behavioral Science for Policy Lab in the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Jeff researches how (mis)perceptions of social norms and the true attitudes of others contributes to climate inaction, and how we can leverage our psychological understanding of such misperceptions to engender greater collective action on climate change.

Jeff completed his PhD in organizational behavior and social psychology at Harvard University in 2020, and prior to joining the BSPL was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub. He is also a Fellow at George Washington University’s Institute for Data, Democracy, & Politics, where he collaborates on research to combat anti-democracy misinformation.

Contact: jeffrey.m.lees@gmail.com
Personal Website: https://www.jeffreymlees.com

Holly is a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment researching pathways to broad public support for utility-scale renewable energy projects across the US. Her work explores the formation of local and regional stakeholder coalitions and the narratives they form around a clean energy transition in relation to economic revitalization, labor organization, and notions of procedural and distributional justice.

Drawing on her interdisciplinary social science background, Holly is interested in how different actors define and envision a ‘just transition’, working to identify policy frameworks that enable rapid, equitable decarbonization.

Holly earned her Ph.D. from the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, where her dissertation research explored social-behavioral drivers of household resource

Gregg Sparkman is a postdoctoral research associate in the Andlinger Center at Princeton University. His research is focused on understanding social change, including the causes and consequences of norms shifting over time. He completed his PhD at Stanford University in social psychology, where he investigated how people are influenced by witnessing social change and how this can be incorporated into interventions in social, environmental, and political domains. Collaborating with non-profit, public, and private organizations, he uses national surveys and field studies to develop and assess social psychological interventions to meet social and environmental goals.

Contact: greggrs@princeton.edu

Personal Website: greggrs.mycpanel.princeton.edu

Aaron Charlop-Powers is a native of New York City. He is interested in human decision making, specifically in the context of understanding and creating public policy. He is a 2020 graduate of the Master in Public Policy program at Princeton University.

Hale Forster is a Ph.D. student in the Psychology department at Columbia University, where she also conducts research in the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions and the Center for Decision Sciences. Her research focuses on behavior change and decision making, with an emphasis on understanding and encouraging sustainable energy use behaviors using a combination of lab and field research.

She is currently researching the effect of messages that activate environmental motivations on energy saving choices. This research examines the mechanisms through which environmental messages can lead to behavior change, including influencing how people make decisions (via activating different decision modes) and understanding how these messages activate a range of environmental identities.

She also studies how social environments can foster behavior change. Prior to joining Columbia, Hale was a Senior Consultant at an energy market research firm. She has a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Oregon.

Alicia studies politics at the intersection of development and the environment, and she focuses on the way that collective action interacts with local politics to influence sustainable development. By combining a deep understanding of the social and political realities of local contexts with cutting-edge climate data, her research illuminates the relationship between human and natural systems.

Alicia’s research interests include the political economy of development, environmental politics and policymaking, distributive politics, and statistical methods. Her broader research agenda studies the politics of natural disasters, natural resource management, and climate change mitigation and adaptation in developing countries.

Alicia received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University in 2019, a Master of International Affairs (M.I.A.) from UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy & Strategy in 2013, and a B.A. in Human Biology from Stanford University in 2008.