Paul Ferraro

Paul J. Ferraro is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Human Behavior and Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University. Ferraro has joint faculty appointments in the Carey Business School and the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, and in the Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Whiting School of Engineering. Ferraro’s research focuses on building a credible evidence base about the environmental and social impacts of public and private programs. Combining the approaches of epidemiologists, with their naturally occurring data, and clinical trial health scientists, with their randomized controlled trials, Ferraro seeks to identify the causal links between the actions we take to improve our world and the impacts of those actions. He also has broad interests in understanding human behaviors and in uncovering causal relationships in complex systems. Because these research areas are multidisciplinary and applied, he collaborates with scientists and engineers from a variety of social, natural, and physical science disciplines, as well as practitioners in the field.

Ferraro’s work has led to the development of evidence-based programs that tackle some of society’s most pressing problems. His research has helped determine how societies can best address clean water scarcity, quantified the impacts of environmental regulations on the poor, and improved the effectiveness of conservation programs. He is currently collaborating with natural and physical scientists to elucidate causal relationships in ecological and hydrological systems.

A former biodiversity science advisor to the Global Environment Facility, he serves as a Commissioner on the State Children’s Environmental Health and Protection Advisory Council to Maryland’s General Assembly, as well as on the scientific advisory committees for the Symbiosis Coalition, Innovations for Poverty Action, and the Inter-American Development Bank.

His awards include a designation as a Fellow of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economics, an EPA STAR fellowship, Bellagio Fellowship, Provost’s Faculty Fellow Award, Fulbright Scholarship, and Cozzarelli Prize from the National Academy of Sciences. He also served as a USDA Visiting Scholar, a Distinguished Scholar-Lecturer for the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, and the University of Cambridge’s Humanitas Visiting Professor in Sustainability Studies.

Ferraro earned an undergraduate and master’s degree from Duke University in 1990 and 1994, respectively. He graduated from Cornell University with a PhD in 2001. Before joining Johns Hopkins in 2015, he was a Regents’ Professor in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University.