David Hennessy, professor, is from Michigan State University College of Agriculture & Natural Resources, where he was professor and Elton R. Smith Chair in Food and Agricultural Policy since 2015. He previously worked on the faculty at Washington State University and Iowa State, where he received his PhD. He returns to Iowa State with his wife, Hongli Feng, who started in the department in January 2021 as assistant professor and Endowed Professor for Excellence in Agricultural Economics and Director of the MSAE program.
Bobby Martens, associate professor, is the new Iowa Institute for Cooperatives Economics Professor. Martens earned his PhD in Applied Economics, Purdue University in May 2006, and was associate professor of supply chain management in Iowa State's Debbie and Jerry Ivy College of Business from 2006 to 2021.
Irene Jacqz starts as assistant professor of environmental and resource economics Aug. 16. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the field of environmental and natural resource economics in 2020 and is a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Inequality in America Initiative. Her areas of focus are air pollution, environmental policy, environmental justice, health, education, and inequality.
Chad Cotti, Oshkosh Corporation Endowed Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, joins the department as a visiting professor beginning fall 2021. His research interests lie broadly within applied microeconomics, with specific interests within the fields of health economics, public finance, and public policy. His work has appeared in several leading economics journals in economics, including the Review of Economics & Statistics, the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Health Economics, and the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.