Dr. Elinor Benami

FACULTY AFFILIATE   |   Global Change Center

Agricultural and Applied Economics

Lab Website  •  Google Scholar  •  Dept Page

elinor@vt.edu  •    540-231-1147

Elinor Benami’s current research centers on environment, development, and agriculture, with a focus on how advances in remote sensing and machine learning can help equitably enhance environmental compliance in the US and improve programs to manage weather risk around the globe. Drawing upon methods and theories from economics and land system science, her research seeks to addresses how digital data can help predict, detect, and remedy environmental hazards that affect human welfare.

One example of Dr. Benami’s work includes evaluating programs — whether sustainability standards in Brazil or satellite-based insurance contracts in East Africa — to help farmers enhance their resilience to weather risk. Other work, in partnership with the Stanford RegLab, concerns how public agencies can leverage machine learning to enhance their effectiveness, focusing on environmental noncompliance in the US.

Previously, Dr. Benami was a postdoc in the Markets, Risk, and Resilience (MRR) Innovation Lab of the Agricultural and Resource Economics department at the University of California, Davis, following her Ph.D. from the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER) at Stanford.

Before graduate school, Elinor was a research analyst at Climate Policy Initiative, where she worked on renewable energy finance in the US and tropical land use following her studies of economics and environmental science at UNC-Chapel Hill. She is also a licensed amateur radio operator (call sign K6NMI).