Susana Constenla-Villoslada

I am a 3rd year PhD student at the I School working on international development research. With a background in development economics and diving now into the more computer science of things, I combine econometrics and machine learning to provide new solutions to ongoing problems in international development. I also combine traditional data sources in development economics with new data sources, mainly from remote sensing.  I specialize in impact evaluation design and implementation, cross-sectional and forward-looking prediction for targeting and early warning, and indicator development (new measure development and the use of new data sources to proxy for well-being and environmental measures of interest) and validation (rigorous statistical comparison with traditional well-being/environmental indicators). 

Before joining the ISchool, I spent three years as a Research Analyst at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C. I hold an M.S. in Development Economics from Cornell University, which I obtained under a Fulbright Scholarship. I also hold a B.S. in Agricultural Engineering, with honors, from the Polytechnic University of Madrid.

Publications:

Constenla-Villoslada, S., Liu, Y., Wen, J. et al. (2022). Large-scale land restoration improved drought resilience in Ethiopia’sdegraded watersheds. Nature Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038.

Upton, J., Constenla-Villoslada, S. and Barrett, C.B. (2022). “Caveat utilitor: A comparative assessment of resiliencemeasurement approaches”, Journal of Development Economics, Vol- 157, 102873.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2022.102873.