RIT Professor Wins Prestigious Regional Science Award

Amitrajeet A. Batabyal recognized for his research in regional science and environmental economics

Rochester Institute of Technology professor Amitrajeet A. Batabyal, a resident of the town of Brighton, recently won the annual Geoffrey J.D. Hewings Award. Presented by the North American Regional Science Council, the Hewings Award recognizes distinguished contributions to the regional science field by scholars who completed their doctoral studies within the past decade.

Batabyal, the Arthur J. Gosnell Professor of Economics at RIT, an endowed chair, was praised for his research on the design of international environmental agreements, innovative models of land development over time and under uncertainty, and for his studies of alternative pollution control instruments when goods are traded across regions.

“I am grateful to be the recipient of this prestigious award, and it means a lot to me,” Batabyal says. “Specifically, it is nice to know that the regional science profession generally believes that the questions I have addressed are salient and that I have analyzed them in interesting ways.”

Batabyal is the author of more than 200 publications, including the books, The Economics of International Environmental Agreements, The Economics of International Trade and the Environment, and the forthcoming Stochastic Modeling in Range Management: Selected Essays.

Batabyal received his doctorate in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994, his master’s in agricultural and applied economics from the University of Minnesota in 1990, and his bachelor’s in agricultural economics from Cornell University in 1987.