Six New Faculty Join Andrew Young School of Policy Studies

ATLANTA — Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies (AYSPS) is welcoming six new faculty members to campus this fall.

Ben Marx, Alex Bell and Miracle-Rose Toppar join the Department of Economics — Marx as an associate professor, Bell as an assistant professor and Toppar as a clinical assistant professor. Eden Kamar joins the Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology as an assistant professor. Suresh Neupane (M.S. ’22, Ph.D. ’24) joins the Department of Public Management & Policy as a lecturer, and the School of Social Work is welcoming Maritza Vasquez Reyes as an assistant professor.

“We are pleased to welcome these new faculty members to the Andrew Young School,” said Dean Thomas J. Vicino. “With deep commitments to teaching and research excellence, they will play a key role in advancing our mission of student success.”

Ben Marx

Marx is an applied microeconomist working in the field of public economics. Prior to joining AYSPS, he was an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He’s also been a visiting scholar at the University of Miami and a lecturer and assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Marx’s research examines policies and motivations for charitable giving, the growth of the nonprofit sector and the effects of grants and student loans in higher education. He has published in journals including the American Economic Review: Insights, the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, the Journal of Public Economics and Experimental Economics. He also contributed a chapter to “The Economics of Philanthropy.”

Marx earned an Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award from the National Tax Association, a Nonprofit Research Fellowship from the National Bureau of Economic Research and was named a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Illinois. He is an associate editor of the Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance and has served on program committees for the National Tax Association and the International Institute of Public Finance. Marx has received grants from Arnold Ventures, the Lumina Foundation and Ideas42, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and the Science of Philanthropy Initiative. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Economics from Columbia University and a B.S.B.A. in Finance and Economics from Robert Morris University.

Alex Bell

Prior to joining Georgia State, Bell was a postdoctoral scholar at the California Policy Lab at the University of California, Los Angeles. For much of his research, he has leveraged large-scale administrative datasets to inform topics in the areas of labor economics, inequality, innovation and entrepreneurship, children, and urban and public economics.

Bell’s research has appeared in top economics publications, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics and American Economic Review. His work has been supported by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Laura & John Arnold Foundation. It has been featured in media outlets including The New York Times, Vox and The Economist, and in government reports by the Government Accountability Office and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Bell holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University and an Sc.B. in Computer Science and Economics from Brown University.

Miracle-Rose Toppar

Toppar comes to AYSPS from Ripon College, where she served as an assistant professor in the Department of Economics and Business Management. Her research specializations are program evaluation, causal analysis, agricultural economics, labor economics, applied econometrics, economic development and the economics of education.

Toppar previously taught at Drake University and Iowa State University. Her main research interest is the economics of cotton production in developing countries. Having extensively worked in clothing manufacturing, she is a major supporter of sustainable fashion, and is particularly interested in consumer demand for fashion items and the consumer’s willingness to pay for clothing from non-fast fashion industries.

Toppar holds a Ph.D. in Economics, an M.Sc. in Economics and a B.Sc. in Business Economics from Iowa State University.

Eden Kamar

Kamar joins the faculty after completing a postdoctoral research fellowship in the Evidence-Based Cybersecurity Research Group (EBCS) at Georgia State University. Her research primarily focuses on cybercrime and cybersecurity, with a specific interest in online sexual grooming of minors, human trafficking, dark markets, malicious codes, phishing attacks and information system vulnerabilities.

In her work, Kamar employs innovative methodologies and rigorous approaches, such as honeypots, open-source intelligence, digital forensics and experiments, to gain insights into various forms of cybercrime, cyber victimization and cybersecurity vulnerabilities. She has received the Young Scholar Award from Cyberagentur and the Rothschild Academic Excellence Award from Yad Hanadiv.

Kamar first joined the Andrew Young School as a graduate research assistant in 2021, working remotely. She has held additional positions as an associate lecturer at London Metropolitan University and as a research coordinator and postdoctoral research fellow with the Minerva Center for Human Rights, Child and Youth Rights Program, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Kamar holds a Ph.D. in Criminology from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an M.Phil. in Criminological Research from the University of Cambridge and a B.Sc. in Criminology and Psychology from London Metropolitan University.

Suresh Neupane

Neupane’s research focuses on social epidemiology, particularly health disparities across racial communities, by examining the impact of environmental and socio-structural factors, such as air pollution and social vulnerability, on health outcomes. His approach integrates both structural factors and individual biological characteristics as drivers of health outcome disparities in racialized populations, emphasizing how these factors influence outcomes related to both chronic and infectious diseases.

For this work, Neupane uses machine learning methods to analyze complex data, demonstrating how similar structural factors shape health outcomes across different types of diseases. His work aims to inform public health strategies and interventions tailored to the needs of racially and economically diverse populations.

Neupane holds a Ph.D. in Urban Studies and an M.S. in Geosciences from Georgia State University, an M.A. in Sociology from the University of West Georgia, and a B.A. in Sociology from Georgia College & State University.

Maritza Vasquez Reyes

Vasquez Reyes grounds her teaching, service and research in 12 years of direct social work practice. Her interdisciplinary research impacts public health and well-being, and she is particularly interested in understanding community supports available to youth facing oppression.

Vasquez Reyes’ recent work draws on data collected on youth impacted by structural violence. She examines the role counterspaces — settings that promote the psychological well-being of individuals who experience oppression — play in facilitating youth engagement in positive social change. Her research is guided by the principles of community participatory action research.

Through partnerships with youth and their communities, Vasquez Reyes’ work aims to promote social justice and disrupt patterns of poverty and inequality. Guided by close collaboration with those with lived experience, Vasquez Reyes’ work is designed to address gaps in the literature and bring about social change at the local, national and international levels. As a faculty member, she is committed to helping new generations of social workers be better equipped to work with marginalized and underserved populations.

Vasquez Reyes holds a Ph.D. in Social Work from the University of Connecticut, an M.S.W. from the University at Albany-State University of New York, an M.A. in Sociology from the State University of New York at New Paltz and a B.A. in Social Work and Sociology from Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra in the Dominican Republic.