I am the Executive Director of J-PAL MENA at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and an Associate Professor at the School of Business at AUC. I am also a Research Fellow at the IZA - Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn, Germany, the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA), Maastricht University and at the Economic Research Forum (ERF, Cairo/Egypt).  

Before joining AUC and J-PAL in 2022, I spent 8 years as a Senior Researcher at IZA where I was also the Deputy Director of the special program area "Gender, Growth, and Labor Markets in Low-Income Countries (G²LM|LIC)".

My main research interests are in development economics, applied micro-econometrics, migration, and labor economics. I am particularly interested in the intersection between research and policy in the area of development economics.