ISERP Fellows Program
About the Program
Launched in Fall 2024, the ISERP Fellows Program is targeted towards junior faculty in the Social Sciences at Columbia. ISERP Fellows receive one-semester leave from all teaching and administrative duties at full salary, as well as the budget and administrative support for a high-visibility conference to be organized around each fellow’s research interests.
ISERP selects one fellow per semester, and applications for the fellowship are submitted a year in advance of the planned leave. We anticipate that the next call for applications will be released in September 2026.
Questions? Reach out to [email protected].
About Our Fellows
Fall 2025: Nikhar Gaikwad
Nikhar Gaikwad, Assistant Professor of Political Science, has been chosen as the inaugural ISERP Fellow. Dr. Gaikwad specializes in international and comparative political economy with a focus on trade, migration, and climate change and a regional specialization in India. His work as an ISERP fellow will be on the project “Identity, Emigration, and Internal Migration in Ranked Ethnic Systems”, studying and testing the role of identity in shaping labor migration patterns when culturally segmented societies integrate into the global economy.
Spring 2026: Noémie Pinardon-Touati
Noémie Pinardon-Touati, Economics, has been chosen as the ISERP Fellow for Spring 2026. Dr. Pinardon-Touati’s research rests at the intersection of applied macroeconomics, finance, and public economics. Her work as an ISERP Fellow will be focused on the project “Catch-up Growth, Firm Scale, and the Energy Intensity of Production,” which explores the interplay between economic growth, the increase in firm scale, and the aggregate decline in the energy intensity of production in the context of low- and middle-income countries. The follow-up project “The Unequal Effects of Carbon Taxes Across Firms” examines the distributive effects of carbon taxation across the firm size distribution and the implications for optimal tax design.
Fall 2026: Tatiana Mocanu
Tatiana Mocanu, Economics, has been chosen as the ISERP Fellow for Fall 2026. Dr. Mocanu’s research focuses on labor and economics, studying the impact of firm practices and policies on gender and racial inequalities in labor markets. Her work as an ISERP Fellow will include three projects: “Leaning Out? The Gender Gap in Job Search Persistence,” which provides new evidence related to gender differences in response to adverse job search outcomes; “How Does the Composition of Hiring Committee Matter? New Evidence from Video Data,” which studies how the gender composition of screening committees affects hiring outcomes for job applicants; and “Racial Representation and Productivity in Public Service Delivery,” which is an early-stage project studying how racial representation of public sector employees affects the productivity of government services in Brazil.