Malgosia Madajewicz is an economist with research expertise in adaptation to climate change, economic development, and evaluation of the effectiveness of programs, policies, and adaptation strategies, including assessing the value of climate information. Much of her research has focused on the role that institutions and networks play in influencing the effectiveness of policies and strategies, and in the use and value of climate information. She is a member of the research team that comprises the Consortium for Climate Risk in the Urban Northeast (CCRUN), which is a NOAA-funded RISA (Regional Integrated Science and Assessment). She is currently serving as an external member on the Community-Based Adaptation working group of the New York City Panel on Climate Change. She holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University and has previously served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics and the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.
As a member of CCRUN, Madajewicz is investigating approaches to improving the adaptation of residents in urban neighborhoods to coastal flooding, and ways to improve vulnerability assessments. More broadly, she is responsible for evaluating the impacts that CCRUN achieves through the team's collaborative development of climate information with stakeholders. She is working on improving the data available for assessing impacts of winter storms. She is collaborating with a team at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) on a project that is providing and assessing the value of climate information for coffee growers in Jamaica. She is working with another team at IRI on developing a process for evaluating the progress of national climate information services in Africa over time. She is collaborating with the Tropical Agriculture team at the Earth Institute on understanding the value of soil information for smallholder farmers in Tanzania. She just completed her second evaluation of an Oxfam America program that takes an integrated risk management approach, including weather index insurance, to improve livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Ethiopia.