King Center welcomes two Postdoctoral Fellows and five Predoctoral Research Fellows
The King Center welcomes two new postdoctoral scholars and five new predoctoral fellows this summer.
Incoming Postdoctoral Fellows
Juan Felipe Riaño Rodriguez
Juan Felipe Riaño is an applied microeconomist with research interests spanning the fields of political economy, development economics, and economic history. His current research agenda focuses on understanding the determinants of state capacity in developing countries and the long-term impact of conflict and historical institutions on economic development. More recently, he has been interested in the organizational economics of public sector institutions and the role of cybersecurity in modern states. He received a PhD in economics from the University of British Columbia in 2022 and will join the economics department at Georgetown University as an assistant professor in August 2023.
Karmini Sharma
Karmini Sharma works at the intersection of economics of gender, development economics, and experimental economics. Karmini has used randomized controlled trials, lab-in-the-field experiments, and laboratory experiments to understand deterrence of sexual harassment, gender segregation, and discrimination. She completed her PhD in economics at University of Warwick in March 2022 and will join Imperial College London as an assistant professor of economics in 2024.
Incoming Predoctoral Research Fellows
Shakil Ayan
Shakil Ayan's current research interests include development economics and experimental economics. Previously, Shakil has worked as an assistant research coordinator at BRAC University, Bangladesh, for a large-scale randomized control trial on reducing intimate partner violence through media campaigns. He earned a BA in economics with a minor in finance from McGill University in 2017. Shakil is from Dhaka, Bangladesh, and continues to maintain strong ties with his maternal and paternal hometown, Bhandaria, a small town in rural Bangladesh.
Michael Beshay
Michael Beshay's primary research interests are political economy, development economics, and economics of human capital. Michael holds a BCom in economics from Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt. In his senior year, he joined the University of Chicago as a Sawiris Scholar Exchange Student, where he studied courses in economics and public policy. Previously, he was a research assistant at the University of Chicago, a research Intern at the University of Tokyo (UTSIP Kashiwa), and a research intern at the Ministry of Planning in Egypt.
Besindone Dumi-Leslie
Besindone Dumi-Leslie earned a BA from the University of Alberta with honors in economics. Her research interests include education and urbanization as they relate to opportunity disparities. She is also interested in economic history and governance in Africa.
Amna Ahmed El-Mustafa
Amna Ahmed El-Mustafa’s current research interest is the applications of machine learning (ML) in solving different developmental issues in the global south from climate change and poverty to health problems. She earned her master’s in machine learning at the African Institute for Mathematical Science (AMMI) in Senegal, and her bachelor's in engineering in Khartoum University, Sudan. In her master’s thesis, Amna investigated the fairness of ML models used to predict wealth measures from satellite data and whether they are biased toward urban areas. Amna is also conducting research in modeling species distribution with ML and remote sensing.
Suhi Hanif
Suhi Hanif earned a BS in anatomy and cell biology from McGill University in 2018. She worked as a senior research assistant at the BRAC James P. Grant School of Public Health and hopes to pursue a PhD in epidemiology. Suhi is from Dhaka, Bangladesh.
