Rajiv Sharma is Research Director at the Stanford Global Projects Center and a Visiting Research Associate at the Oxford University Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. Rajiv has conducted research and worked in the field of private institutional infrastructure investment. He received his Doctorate in Economic Geography at Oxford University where his thesis title was the role of private institutional investors for the development of urban infrastructure assets. Rajiv has worked as an economist for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris and as a research fellow for the United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative. He also has investment management experience working for venture capital private equity firm Oxford Capital Partners and London-based Infrastructure/Private Equity Advisory firm, Campbell Lutyens. Rajiv completed a Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Engineering with first class honours from the University of Auckland. He is a keen sportsman playing cricket competitively to first class level but also enjoys football, tennis, golf and drama.
Research Team
Rajiv Sharma, Ph.D.
Research Director
Soh Young In, Ph.D.
Sustainable Finance Lead
Soh Young In is the ESG Integration and Investment Lead at Stanford Global Projects Center (GPC). She is also leading research on financial innovation at the Sustainable Finance Initiative (SFI) of the Precourt Institute for Energy. Her research interest is to align the financial system with a low-carbon economy, and to catalyze sustainable finance. Her research supports investors, entrepreneurs and policymakers to drive positive social and environmental impact alongside financial results. At GPC, she focuses on the explicit and systematic inclusion of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues in investment analysis and decision makings. Soh Young won a research award from the United Nation Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), and the US Clean Energy Education and Empowerment (C3E) Award by the US Department of Energy (US DOE). Her project on an innovative clean energy investment platform design received grants from the Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy, Bank of America, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the US DOE. Her work has also received extensive media coverage such as Stanford Engineering Magazine, WIRED Magazine, Indexology by S&P Dow Jones and Sustainable Insight Capital Management. Soh Young completed her PhD in the Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, MA in International Policy Studies at Stanford, concentrating in Energy, Environment and Natural Resources, and BA in Economics and Statistics from Columbia University.
Dane Rook, Ph.D.
Research Engineer
Dane Rook is a Research Engineer at Stanford University’s School of Engineering. Dr. Rook’s work explores the intersection of machine intelligence and long-term investing. Broadly, his research interests are in natural-language processing, alternative data, knowledge graphs, and agent-based models, as well as their applications to responsible finance and asset ownership. Previously, he was a researcher at Kensho (an AI-startup acquired by S&P) and J.P.Morgan. Dr. Rook earned his doctoral degree from the University of Oxford as a Clarendon Scholar. He also holds degrees from the University of Cambridge and the University of Michigan. Dr. Rook is an advisor to technology startups in both the US and Europe.
Herman Donner, Ph.D.
Research Scientist
Herman Donner is a Research Scientist at the Global Projects Center. He is currently working on building a modeling platform for "what if" analysis based on data layers on commercial activities within cities. This will provide insights on consumer behavior and determinants of real estate value. Herman has researched various aspects of real estate markets and has published in leading real estate journals. His research has covered foreclosures, rent determinants, the distributional effects rent control and informational asymmetries on the housing market. Herman holds a PhD in Real Estate Economics from KTH Royal Institute of Technology and has conducted research at the George Washington University and Stanford.
Carter Casady, Ph.D.
Postdoctural Scholar
Carter recently obtained his Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. He is passionate about infrastructure development, procurement, governance, public-private partnerships (PPPs), project finance, and public policy. His current interdisciplinary research examines the impacts of deferred maintenance on public sector buildings. Prior to entering the PhD program, Mr. Casady served as research associate for the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, conducting simplified Benefit-Cost Analyses (BCAs) on U.S. managed lane projects. His past experience also includes work for the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), President’s Council of Economic Advisors (CEA), and Cornell Program in Infrastructure Policy (CPIP). He holds a B.S. in Policy Analysis & Management (2016) from Cornell University and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering (2017, 2020) from Stanford University.
Julie Kim, Ph.D.
P3 FLIPS Program Director Emeritus
Julie Kim was the P3 FLIPS Program Developer at the Stanford Global Projects Center and was working to develop sustainable business models for public-private partnerships (P3) in the U.S. market, drawing upon 30-year P3 experiences and best practices globally and developing new and innovative approaches where needed. Her research focus has been on P3 political risks and infrastructure banking cooperative. Julie has over 25 years of experience in large-scale infrastructure projects in the U.S. and Asia, with a special expertise in transportation sector. She is a founder and CEO of BeneTellus, a consulting firm specializing in infrastructure privatization and financing. Dr. Kim was Senior Researcher and Director of Asia-Pacific Infrastructure Initiative at RAND Corporation. Prior to RAND, she was a senior executive with AECOM and URS Corporation where her experience encompassed all phases of large-scale infrastructure development projects from initial planning phase through design, construction, and operations phases. Dr. Kim was also the founding Executive Director of Collaboratory of Research in Global Projects (CRGP), a predecessor to GPC. Dr. Kim holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering from M.I.T. as well as a M.S. and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Stanford University.
W. Richard Scott, Ph.D.
Senior Research Fellow Emeritus
W. Richard (Dick) Scott is a professor of sociology, emeritus, with courtesy appointments in the Schools of Business, Education, and Medicine. Since 2002, he has played a key role in CRGP research by introducing his broad framework on institutions and institutional differences to our study of global projects. He is lead editor of the book, Global Projects: Institutional and Political Challenges, co-edited with Raymond Levitt and Ryan Orr, published by Cambridge University Press in June, 2011. His major field is organizational studies and among the many types of organizations studied are educational, research, and healthcare organizations. His most recent empirical research project examined changes in the healthcare delivery systems in the San Francisco Bay area during the second half of the 20th century. Changes in five populations of healthcare organizations (eg, hospitals, HMOs, HHAs) were depicted and explained in terms of wider changes in the material resource (eg, demographic characteristics and financial resources) and institutional environments (eg, changes in regulatory, normative, and belief systems). He continues to focus on the general issues of institutional influences on organizational forms and functions, including changes in political regimes and policies.
Antonio Vives, Ph.D.
Consulting Professor Emeritus
Antonio Vives is Consulting Professor with the Stanford Global Projects Center (GPC). He also currently serves as Principal Associate at Cumpetere and is a former Member of the Public Infrastructure Advisory Commission of the State of California and the Sustainable Development Department of the Inter-American Development Bank, IDB. For 25 years he was a member of the Investment Committee of the Pension Fund of the Bank which currently has over $3 billion USD in assets, 15 years of which he served as Vice-Chairman. Antonio has been a professor at the IESA Graduate School of Management in Venezuela, and at the graduate business schools of Carnegie Mellon, George Washington and Virginia Tech universities in the United States. He has authored a textbook on corporate financial evaluation and published numerous articles on financial management and private infrastructure. Most recently he co-wrote "Financial Structuring of Infrastructure Projects in Public Private Partnerships", published by the IDB, “The Economics and Finance of Water”, published by the World Bank and “Selecting infrastructure delivery modalities: No time for ideology or semantics” published in the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management. He is a recognized expert on Corporate Social Responsibility in Spanish speaking countries. Antonio holds a MBA in Industrial Administration and a Ph.D. in Corporate Finance and Capital Markets, both from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Bushra Bataineh, Ph.D.
Previous PhD Student
Bushra Bataineh was a doctoral candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University; she has since obtained her Ph.D. Her research focused on innovative project delivery mechanisms for water infrastructure worldwide. She is focused on private sector participation in water infrastructure projects in developing countries and the emergence of local private water operators. She is also analyzing cases of water sector public-private partnerships in the United States in order to draw lessons from innovative financial structuring. Prior to joining Stanford, Bushra worked on an array of water-related projects in Jordan aimed at addressing various aspects of the water crisis facing the country. Her work included preparation of a bid for a multi-billion dollar water project with conveyance, desalination, and hydropower components, reorganization and expansion of a leading agricultural initiative, and development of water use efficiency plans under a USAID program for water-demand management. Bushra holds a master’s degree in environmental fluid mechanics and hydrology from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in hydrologic sciences and policy from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Kate Gasparro, Ph.D.
Previous PhD Student
Kate was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and received her Ph.D in 2019 from Stanford University in Sustainable Design and Construction. Kate’s research bridges the fields of civil engineering and public policy. Using empirical, case-based and novel research methods, she has published work on the use of public private partnerships and the emergence of crowdfunding for infrastructure delivery. Kate brings an entrepreneurial spirit to her research, drawing from extensive project experience in Argentina, Uganda, Mexico, China, and Nicaragua and industry experience in urban planning, transportation engineering, construction management, and public policy analysis. As a result, she has been invited globally to make presentations and has won numerous fellowships and grants. Kate holds a BS in civil engineering from Clemson University and an MA in International Policy from Stanford University.
Robert Wilhelm Siegfried Ruhlandt
PhD Student
Robert is a Ph.D. candidate in the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department at Stanford University, previously advised by Professor Ray Levitt. Robert’s research focuses on big urban data and digital technologies in cities. He is passionate about innovative ways to address organizational, strategic and technical challenges in the urban environment. Prior to pursuing a Ph.D., Robert worked as a consultant at Bain & Company. Robert is a Fondahl Stanford Graduate Student Fellow and holds an M.S. in management science and engineering from Stanford, as well as an M.S. and B.S. in industrial engineering and management from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).
