Benjamin Bryant

Ben Bryant is a decision support modeler currently based at Millenium Challenge Corporation with a joint research collaborator affiliation between Water in the West and the Natural Capital Project (NatCap). His primary focus is on translating science and economics into analysis that can help identify trade-offs and synergies when working landscapes are managed for multiple objectives. These include water provisioning, agriculture, GHG mitigation, habitat, and other ecosystem services. Methodologically, he also works to develop and demonstrate tools and guidance to improve the treatment of uncertainty in ecosystem service modeling, with a particular focus on spatial optimization. He has broader research interests in decision making under deep uncertainty and resilience, social choice processes, and food system sustainability. Ben earned a PhD in Policy Analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School at the RAND Corporation, where he completed a dissertation modeling efficiency and equity tradeoffs in groundwater markets. He also holds a BS in mathematics from Harvey Mudd College, with significant coursework in engineering as well as political and ethical philosophy. Immediately prior to joining the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford, he was a country economist conducting cost-benefit analyses for the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a US government international development agency.