The Mosbacher Research Fellows Program recognizes individuals who have made or are committed to making significant research contributions in the area of trade, energy, governance, or public services. Our two-year fellows contribute to the Mosbacher Institute’s The Takeaway policy brief series and partner in our research endeavors.
Anupam Agrawal
Associate Professor, Texas A&M Mays Business School
Dr. Anupam Agrawal is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information and Operations Management at the Mays Business School. He researches, teaches, and has worked in the arena of supply chain management. In a career spanning over a decade in the industry, he has worked in various areas of supply chain; specifically, procurement, supplier development, and new product development. His research focuses on sourcing of modular components, relationships between buyers and suppliers, and learning and depreciation in supply chains, and it has informed the practice of supply chain at several firms. He teaches courses in the arena of supply chain to PhD, MBA, and undergraduate students. In his personal life, he is very actively involved with the education of underprivileged children; specifically, with Laxmi Ashram, an organization in Kausani hills in India, that works for the education of underprivileged girls.
Agrawal holds MS and PhD degrees in technology and operations from INSEAD, an MBA from IIM Calcutta, and a BTech from IIT Kanpur.
Read Dr. Agrawal’s full biography.
Mallory E. Compton
Assistant Professor, The Bush School of Government & Public Service
Dr. Mallory E. Compton joined the faculty of the Department of Public Service and Administration as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2019. Before that, she held the position of Post-Doctoral Researcher at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, working on the Project for Successful Public Governance. Dr. Compton’s research and teaching interests include bureaucracy and public governance, public policy, comparative political economy, and social welfare policy.
Dr. Compton earned her bachelor’s degree with a double major in political science and economics at Texas A&M, graduating summa cum laude in 2008, with a Certificate in European Union Politics, Foundation Honors, and University Honors. She received her Master of Public Administration degree from the London School of Economics in 2010 and subsequently returned to Texas A&M to earn her PhD in political science in 2016. Following her doctoral studies, Dr. Compton held the Carlos Cantu Post-Doctoral Fellowship as part of the department’s Project for Equity, Representation and Governance.
Read Dr. Compton’s full biography.
Kalena Cortes
Professor, The Bush School of Government & Public Service
Dr. Kalena E. Cortes is the Verlin and Howard Kruse ’52 Founders Professor in the Department of Public Service and Administration at the Bush School of Government & Public Service. Her research is in the area of the economics of education, focusing on issues of equity and access; in particular, identifying educational policies that help disadvantaged students at the PK-12 and postsecondary levels.
Dr. Cortes earned a PhD in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. She is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in the Economics of Education program, a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), and a Scholar in the Mindset Scholars Network. At Texas A&M, she was named a 2020 Presidential Impact Fellow and a 2021 EDGES Fellow.
Read Dr. Cortes’ full biography.
Laura Dague
Associate Professor of Health Policy, The Bush School of Government & Public Service
Dr. Laura Dague is an associate professor in the Public Service and Administration department in the Bush School of Government & Public Service at Texas A&M University. She holds a PhD in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where her doctoral fields of study were public economics and labor economics. She is currently a faculty affiliate of the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty and faculty research fellow in the National Bureau of Economic Research Health Economics program. Dague is an expert on Medicaid and the economics of public health insurance. Her work has been published in journals including the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Health Economics, JAMA Network Open, Health Affairs, and Health Services Research.
Read Dr. Dague’s full biography.
Michael Denly
Assistant Professor, The Bush School of Government & Public Service
Michael (Mike) Denly is an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service, where he teaches courses on quantitative methods. His substantive research focuses on the political economy of development, with an emphasis on corruption, foreign aid, and natural resources. Mike also has a separate methodological research agenda that centers on external validity. His work appears in the Annual Review of Political Science and Journal of Conflict Resolution. Outside of academia, Mike has worked and/or consulted for the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, USAID, US State Department, and the EU Commission.
Mike completed his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2022 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse for the 2022-2023 academic year. Mike also holds a dual M.A. in Development Management and Policy from Georgetown University and Universidad Nacional de San Martín in Argentina, an M.Sc. in Public Policy and Human Development from Maastricht University in the Netherlands, and a B.A. in International Studies from the University of Denver.
Read Dr. Denly’s full biography
Robert Greer
Associate Professor, The Bush School of Government & Public Service
Dr. Robert Greer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Service and Administration and is Director of the Certificate in Public Management. He is also a Research Fellow in both the Institute for Science, Technology, and Public Policy and the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics, and Public Policy. Greer’s research interests are in state and local government financial management; specifically, in the areas of debt management, infrastructure finance, and environmental finance. His recent publications focus on issues of governance structure and their relationship to infrastructure finance and debt management. Current projects continue this work by considering complex networks of water districts and the connection between their fiscal capacity and performance. His work has been published in Public Administration Review, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Policy Studies Journal, Public Budgeting & Finance, Municipal Finance Journal, Urban Studies, Energy Policy, Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, and Public Finance Review.
Greer earned both his MPP and PhD from the Martin School of Public Policy and Administration, University of Kentucky, and has a BA in economics and business administration from Trinity University and an MPA from the University of North Texas. He was the recipient of the 2012 Emerging Scholar Award from the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA) and was also awarded the Hatton W. Sumner Scholar Award. Greer is also a Co-PI on a $1.5 million grant on pathways to sustainable urban water security through desalination and water reuse as well as a Texas A&M T3 grant on the circular economy and sustainable development goals.
Read Dr. Greer’s full biography.
Jeehee Han
Assistant Professor, The Bush School of Government & Public Service
Dr. Jeehee Han joined the Bush School’s Department of Public Service and Administration in 2021. Dr. Han obtained her doctorate in public administration, focusing on the fields of social policy and public finance, from Syracuse University in 2021. She holds an MA in quantitative methods in the social sciences from Columbia University and a BA in economics and sociology from Northwestern University.
Dr. Han’s research interests concentrate on housing, education, urban policy, socioeconomic inequality, and public and financial management, and her work has appeared in journals including Regional Science and Urban Economics, Housing Policy Debate, and Housing Studies. She was selected to receive a dissertation grant from the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy and was funded by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy to participate in the 2021 Lincoln Institute Scholars Program.
Benjamin Helms
Assistant Professor, The Bush School of Government & Public Service
Benjamin Helms joined the Department of International Affairs as an Assistant Professor in the fall of 2023. He was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his PhD in Politics from the University of Virginia in 2022.
Helms’ research interests are in international political economy, with a particular focus on the political economy of globalization in emerging economies and the politics of international migration. He is particularly interested in how global economic integration reshapes domestic politics in developing countries, as well as the political causes and consequences of immigration. Helms’ book, The Ties that Bind: Immigration and the Global Political Economy (co-authored with David Leblang), was published with Cambridge University Press in 2023. His ongoing projects focus on globalization and governance outcomes in emerging economies, the relationship between internal migration and political change in developing countries, and the linkages between international migration and foreign investment.
Helms’ research has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, International Studies Quarterly, Studies in Comparative International Development, and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. His research has been supported by the Bankard Fund for Political Economy.
Yoon Jo
Assistant Professor, Texas A&M Department of Economics
Dr. Yoon Jo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Texas A&M University. She is a macroeconomist particularly interested in microdata-consistent macroeconomics. She studies the frictions in individual wage and price data and explores policy correcting the distortions in the labor and goods market. She investigates cyclical variations of nominal wage change distributions in the United States and reports downward frictions in adjusting nominal wages. She argues fiscal policies are more effective in stimulating output in a low-inflation recession when nominal wages are constrained to adjusting downwardly.
Dr. Jo earned a PhD in economics from Columbia University in New York City. She received her MA in economics from Seoul National University and the University of Washington, Seattle. She received her BS in mathematics from KAIST.
Read Dr. Joon’s full biography.
Andres Jola-Sanchez
Assistant Professor, Texas A&M Mays Business School
Dr. Jola-Sanchez is an Assistant Professor of Operations Management at Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. His research explores the problem of war and urban crisis in the field of operations management. His research topic has roots in his extensive field experience in Colombia, where he worked as a researcher for various organizations, including the National Planning Department and the Ministry of Finance. His research provides insights to help humanitarian, commercial, and public sector organizations respond to the operational issues arising from armed conflicts. His work has appeared in journals such as Production and Operations Management and the Journal of Operations Management.
Jola-Sanchez holds a PhD in operations management and decision sciences from Indiana University, MS degrees in industrial engineering and business, and BS degrees in industrial engineering and economics.
Read Dr. Jola-Sanchez’s full biography.
Eric Lewis
Assistant Professor, The Bush School of Government & Public Service
Dr. Eric Lewis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Service and Administration at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, where he specializes in energy economics and industrial organization. He was previously an economist with the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice.
Lewis has written extensively about US land policy, oil and natural gas drilling, market efficiency, and market power. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and Middle East studies and Arabic from Brigham Young University and an MA in economics and a PhD in economics, both from the University of Michigan.
Read Dr. Lewis’s full biography.
Zenon Medina-Cetina
Associate Professor, Texas A&M Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Dr. Zenon Medina-Cetina is Associate Professor in the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Texas A&M University (TAMU). He is an expert on probabilistic risk assessment and management of geo-systems, which components vary in space and time. He received TAMU’s College of Engineering Excellence Award for Outstanding Contributions and holds the Zachry Career Professorship II endowment “in recognition of his many accomplishments and future potential.” He is the author of more than 80 refereed publications and of over 80 other government, industry, and academic scholarly products.
Dr. Medina-Cetina’s international research diplomacy approach has materialized in the integration of large transdisciplinary teams to formulate models aimed at improving the stability of regional social, economic, and environmental interdependent systems. Dr. Medina-Cetina teaches courses in Bayesian Risk Networks, Stochastic Mechanics, Geomechanics, Geotechnical Engineering, and leads the Introduction to Research Abroad Program (IRAP), a TAMU’s campus-wide international multidisciplinary program for freshman and sophomore students. Dr. Medina-Cetina has chaired and graduated 14 doctoral and 13 master students; and mentored 4 postdoctoral scholars, 33 master and 38 undergraduate students. He is a Fellow of the Society for Underwater Technology (SUT), past Chair and President of SUT in the U.S., and a former Fulbright Scholar. He currently serves as the Chair of the Risk Assessment and Management Committee of the American Society of Civil Engineer’s Geo-Institute.
Danila Serra
Associate Professor, Texas A&M Department of Economics and the Bush School of Government & Public Service
Dr. Danila Serra joined Texas A&M University in Fall 2019 as an Associate Professor of economics, in a joint appointment with the Department of Economics and the Bush School’s Department of International Affairs. Serra holds a PhD in economics from Oxford University and a master of economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Serra has been a consultant for the World Bank in various projects and has conducted research both in developed and developing countries, including Ethiopia, Kenya, and Angola. In her work, she has applied novel experimental methodologies and survey design to the study of corruption, governance, and accountability. She has published numerous highly cited articles in peer-reviewed journals and edited a book on the subject. Her most recent work focuses on issues related to gender differences in education and labor market participation, gender norms, and women’s empowerment.
In November 2017, Serra was chosen as the inaugural recipient of the Vernon Smith Ascending Scholar Prize. The prize—named after the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics winner, Vernon Smith—is a “budding genius” award granted by the International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics (IFREE) to an exceptional scholar in the field of experimental economics.
Read Dr. Serra’s full biography.
Christopher Odinet
Professor of Law, Texas A&M School of Law
Christopher Odinet is a professor of law and an affiliate professor of finance at Texas A&M University. His teaching and research specialize in commercial and consumer finance law and real estate transactions, with an emphasis on mortgage lending, insolvency, digital asset markets, and financial regulation. He is a co-author on several widely-used casebooks on secured credit and real estate finance, and he is the author of Foreclosed: Mortgage Servicing and the Hidden Architecture of Homeownership in America (published in 2019 by Cambridge University Press).
In addition to his faculty role, Chris has been active in numerous professional and public service organizations, including the Association of American Law Schools, the American Bar Association, the Uniform Law Commission, the American Law Institute, and the American College of Real Estate Lawyers. Prior to coming to the Texas A&M, he served on the law faculties of the University of Iowa, the University of Oklahoma, and the Southern University Law Center. Prior to that, he was an attorney in the business and finance group at Phelps Dunbar LLP.
Read Professor Odinet’s full biography.
Dr. Gyu Sang Shim
Instructional Assistant Professor, Bush School DC
Gyu Sang Shim, PhD, is a Lecturer at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service in Washington, D.C. Dr. Shim receives his PhD in Political Science from the University of Rochester (2022). He obtained his MA degree in Political Science and MS degree in Economics from Purdue University (2017), and graduated from Konkuk University, Seoul, Korea with a BA degree in Political Science (2012).
Dr. Shim’s research highlights that firms have diverse political backgrounds, and they leverage that against investment risks. He applies formal theory and implements quantitative analysis of firm-level datasets to study how multinational corporations handle political risks such as the host government’s policy changes, armed conflicts, social protests, and investment screening.
Aileen Teague
Assistant Professor, The Bush School of Government & Public Service
Dr. Aileen Teague is an Assistant Professor of International Affairs at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government & Public Service. She teaches classes on American history and US relations with Mexico and Latin America as well as thematic courses addressing issues such as interventionism, drug enforcement, national security, and addiction in US society. Dr. Teague enjoys providing a voice on how history has shaped current social and political issues. Her research focuses broadly on issues of interventionism and militarization, incorporating top-down and bottom-up perspectives to understand the effects of US policies on foreign societies.
She earned her PhD in history from Vanderbilt University, served in the US Marine Corps, and held a postdoctoral fellowship at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs before joining the Bush School.
Read Dr. Teague’s full biography.
Tatiana Zarate-Barrera
Assistant Professor of Economics, The Bush School of Government & Public Service
Tatiana Zarate-Barrera is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. She also serves as a Research Fellow at the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics, and Public Policy.
Dr. Zarate-Barrera’s research combines economics and computational methods with large-scale data to study environmental issues in low to middle-income countries. She investigates how pollution affects various aspects of human well-being and evaluates the economic benefits of conserving and restoring natural ecosystems. Some of her more recent work also explores issues related to gender and female empowerment in contexts of violence and conflict. Her research has been conducted in countries such as Mexico, Colombia, and Rwanda.
Before joining academia, Dr. Zarate-Barrera worked for several years as a consultant for international organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean. During her time at the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, she collaborated on health and education policy evaluations with officials from Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Dr. Zarate-Barrera earned her Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia, with a disciplinary focus on environmental economics. She also holds MA, BA, and B.Sc. degrees in economics and industrial engineering from Universidad de los Andes.
