Alex is a researcher at UNU-MERIT focusing on social protection research. He is part of the team under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Franziska Gassmann and Dr Sonja Fransen engaged in a four-year evaluation of WFP's relief, recovery and livelihood activities in Kenya's refugee camps and host settlements as well as cash transfers in Nairobi and Mombasa. He has recently worked on a project to improve Malawi's Social Cash Transfer Programme for rural poor households for UNICEF and before that evaluated WFP and USDA/McGovern-Dole school feeding programme in 13 Districts in Malawi.

Alex's research interests include: understanding the implications of different targeting methodologies and how machine learning can have distributional implications; social protection in humanitarian situations and building the case for social protection for refugees.

Alex is also involved in designing and producing new online courses to bring core concepts and statistically rigorous policy analysis to the widest possible audience along with Dr Mindel van de Laar.