Amir Jina is a fourth year student in the Sustainable Development Ph.D. at Columbia. His dissertation deals with the economic, health, and psychological impacts of natural disasters in developing countries. He has worked with the Red Cross in India and Bangladesh, where he has also done fieldwork on disasters and community climate adaptation. His other projects include a global study of climate adaptation, evaluations of early warning and urban disaster risk reduction projects in Uganda, and a study on social network formation in Malawi.

Meha Jain is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology. She is broadly interested in understanding how human decision-making, behavior, and policy influences land use and land cover change at different spatial scales. For her dissertation, she is examining how farmers adapt to short-term rainfall variability in northwest India to better understand which factors drive adaptive capacity and the potential for farmers to adapt to future changes in climate. She conducts this work across a variety of spatial and temporal scales, which allow her to understand broad patterns of adaptation at the regional level while also identifying the mechanisms behind decision-making at the household scale.

Jigar Bhatt is pursuing a Ph.D. in the Department of Planning in the Avery School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University.  His work focuses on the political economy of development and the intersection between knowledge and planning. He has several years of research and professional experience in both infrastructure development in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly around water and sanitation, and social policy in the United States.  He has consulted for various international and non-profit organizations including WaterAid, The World Food Program, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, and Africare.  Mr. Bhatt holds a Master in City Planning from M.I.T. and B.S. in Economics from Northeastern University.

Nelson E. Dove is a M.S. candidate studying water resources and climate risks in the Earth and Environmental Engineering Department in The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. His current research includes finding effective solutions to quickly provide safe drinking water to victims of natural disasters in locations that are limited in disaster relief and transportation infrastructure. Other areas of interest include climate change adaptation, groundwater resource management and natural replenishment of aquifers.