Seema Jayachandran

Seema Jayachandran is a Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. In her research, she studies microeconomic issues in low-income countries, with the goal of designing or identifying policies to address poverty and social inequities. Her current work focuses largely on gender equality in India, and she has also studied environmental conservation, labor markets, and education in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America.

She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the MIT-based Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and leads J-PAL’s gender sector. She also co-directs the National Bureau of Economic Research’s program in Development Economics.

Prior to joining Princeton, she was a faculty member at Stanford University and Northwestern University. She earned a PhD in economics from Harvard University, a master’s degree in physics and philosophy from the University of Oxford where she was a Marshall Scholar, and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT.