Manoj Sharma
Postdoctoral Scholar · Institute of Transportation Studies · UC Davis
I am happy you are here!
I am a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) at the University of California, Davis, where I work with Dr. Julie Witcover and Dr. Colin Murphy on the Biofuel Land Use Change (BLU-C) research program. My work at ITS focuses on indirect land use change (ILUC) modeling and risk mitigation. My role also involves engaging with stakeholders and policymakers on modeling and policy developments of low carbon fuels.
I earned my Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Kansas State University in 2026, advised by Prof. Nelson B. Villoria. At K-State I was also a Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences (NRES) Graduate Fellow, an interdisciplinary fellowship program.
- You can view my CV here.
- My institutional profile is on the ITS website.
- My research and teaching pages include my research and teaching statements.
Research Interests
My research interests lie at the intersection of agricultural production, trade and the environment economics. My work focuses on the impacts of the EUDR on global soy trade and tropical deforestation, the relationship between market demand (domestic plus international) and land use changes, including deforestation, and how the land price mechanism transfers global land pressure, intermediated by international trade, to local land use decisions.
At UC Davis, I extend this agenda to biofuels and low-carbon fuel policy: modeling indirect land use change, quantifying the land use risks of emerging feedstocks in the global south, and designing mitigation approaches that regulators can actually use.
The connection between production, trade, and environment is a multidimensional concern, involving research initiatives from many disciplinary cores, such as:
- Agricultural economics
- Earth and environmental sciences
- Geography
- Data science
- Policy and international relations
My goal is to contribute to this critical area of research through transdisciplinary collaboration leveraging statistical and data science methods. My specific focus lies in applying economics and employing econometrics tools to address this challenge.
If you would like to connect or discuss potential collaborations, please feel free to reach out to me at paudel.manoz55@gmail.com.
Background
I come from a typical subsistence-based farming household in Nepal. My parents manage the kitchen gardens with seasonal vegetables around the house, keep one or two buffaloes in the shed for dairy and grow staple crops (usually rice in summer and pulses/oilseeds in winter) in the nearby fields. I spent my childhood studying and helping them on the farm and in the kitchen garden in my spare time. My upbringing serves as a cornerstone for my commitment to the land-grant missions: teaching, research and outreach in agricultural economics.
