Christa Court
Director
ccourt@ufl.edu

CV

ResearchGate | Google Scholar
ORCID | Ask IFAS

Christa is an Assistant Professor of Regional Economics in the Food & Resource Economics Department and serves as the Director of the UF/IFAS Economic Impact Analysis Program. Prior to coming to UF, Christa was a contract economist to the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. She holds undergraduate degrees in Economics and Spanish from Middle Tennessee State University and Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Economics from West Virginia University. Her research interests include disaster impact assessment, regional economic modeling, economic impact analysis, and connections in human and natural systems. She is leading numerous funded research projects involving regional economic modeling and has a growing list of related publications and other outputs. Christa holds affiliate faculty status with Florida Sea Grant, UF School of Natural Resources and Environment, the UF Water Institute, the UF/IFAS Food Systems Institute, the Regional Research Institute at West Virginia University, and the University of the Westfjords in Ísafjörður, Iceland. Outside of the office she enjoys spending time outdoors with her family and taking a variety of classes at the Gainesville Circus Center.

Kelsey McDaid
Research Coordinator
kmcdaid@ufl.edu

ResearchGate

Kelsey joined the program in 2020 after graduating with a bachelor's degree in Neuroscience from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has experience collaborating with stakeholders across departments to improve policies and practices particularly pertaining to the library system and related resources. While pursuing her degree she also gained experience in Geographic Information Systems and had the opportunity to tie together spatial and socioeconomic characteristics to better understand and model a potential regional public health issue. She is greatly interested in continuing to learn and pursue interdisciplinary research and understanding the downstream economic impacts of decision-making and policy.

Xiaohui (Sherry) Qiao
xiaohui.qiao@ufl.edu

CV Faculty Page

Roberto Koeneke - Ph.D. Student
rkoeneke@ufl.edu

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Roberto was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, and spent part of his childhood in Gainesville, Florida. He graduated from Iowa State University with a bachelor's degree in 2007 and obtained a master's degree at the University of Miami in Marine Affairs and Policy in 2011. He worked for over ten years with the Center for Independent Experts (CIE), which operates the independent peer review system for NOAA Fisheries. He joined the Ph.D. program in Food and Resource Economics in August 2020 and began his research assistantship with Dr. Christa Court at the UF/IFAS Economic Impact Analysis Program. His research interests are non-market valuation systems for ecosystem services and natural resources, spatial analysis applications for valuation methods, valuation of natural disaster impacts, and economic policy analysis.

Mengming Li - Ph.D. Candidate
mengming.li@ufl.edu

CV
ResearchGate | Google Scholar

 Ming is a PhD candidate in the Food and Resource Economics Department and a Graduate Research Assistant with the UF/IFAS Economic Impact Analysis Program. Before joining FRE, Ming earned a BS in Applied Mathematics from Northwestern Polytechnical University in 2015 and a MS in Population, Resources and Environmental Economics from University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2019. He came to the University of Florida and joined the Economic Impact Analysis Program team in 2019. Currently, his primary research interests include Environmental Economics, Regional Economics, Applied Econometrics, and Input-output Analysis. Since May 2021, Ming has been working as an intern with Andre Avelino and Patrick Lamers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), to evaluate the socio-economic impacts of bio-fuel industry in the U.S. Ming loves to play tennis, badminton, and video games in his free time. After completing his Ph.D., Ming is planning to find an academic position in universities or research institutions.

Julia Ulrich - Master's Student

julia.ulrich@ufl.edu

Resume

LinkedIn

Julia is in her final year as an undergraduate student in the Economics Department at UF. She came to the University of Florida in 2020 and joined the Economic Impact Analysis Program team in 2021. She will graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics in May 2023. Julia will begin graduate school in the Fall of 2023 and will pursue her Master of Arts in Economics at UF. She has completed an economist internship at the USDA and has accepted another internship with a federal government agency for the summer of 2023. Her current research interests include food and resource economics topics such as food security, conservation, and sustainability. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her family, friends, and labradoodle.

Alan Hodges
Director Emeritus
awhodges@ufl.edu

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ResearchGate | Google Scholar
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Alan Wade Hodges is an agricultural economist with 34 years experience at the University of Florida-Institute for Food and Agricultural Sciences, Food & Resource Economics Department in Gainesville, Florida. Before his retirement in 2019, he served as Director of the UF Economic Impact Analysis Program and served in numerous leadership roles for UF-IFAS Extension education and outreach programs. He has conducted research studies on a broad range of issues and industries, including agriculture, forestry, fisheries, environmental horticulture, bioenergy, healthcare, higher education, natural disasters, tourism and recreation. He received Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Agricultural and Biological Engineering from the University of Florida, and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago. Alan is a native of Iowa and lives on a small farm in Alachua County, Florida.

Among his academic career accomplishments:

• Mentored 22 graduate students; taught University undergraduate classes in agribusiness management and forestry;
• Authored 55 refereed articles in scholarly journals, 16 book chapters and monographs, 48 professional conference proceedings, 400+ trade magazine articles, Extension papers, newsletters;
• Presented at 200+ public meetings and professional conferences;
• Awarded over $3.5 million in funding for research grants and contracts;
• Cited 100+ times in popular media, including Wall Street Journal, Florida Trend and The Atlantic;
• Received the 2019 University of Florida-IFAS Superior Accomplishment Award for academic personnel.

John Lai
Faculty Affiliate
johnLai@ufl.edu

Andrew Ropicki
Faculty Affiliate
aropicki@ufl.edu

Caleb Stair
Faculty Affiliate
cstair@ufl.edu

Sungeun Yoon

Assistant Research Scientist
sungeunyoon@ufl.edu

Fei He

Affiliate Post-Doc
he.fei@ufl.edu

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