Adam is an assistant professor in the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University and holds a departmental guest position with the Levin Lab at Princeton. He was a postdoctoral researcher in the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton, working with the Levin Lab and the Behavioral Science and Policy Lab during the 2025-2026 academic year. He earned his Ph.D. in Sustainability with a concentration in Complex Adaptive Systems Science at Arizona State University where he was also an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. His work focuses on the politics of infrastructure investment and its relationship to sustainability goals, including resilience and equity. He maintains an interdisciplinary approach that draws on perspectives from public policy and administration, political economy, social-ecological systems, and complexity science to advance scholarly and practical understanding. His doctoral work examined how the design of institutions responsible for infrastructure affects the robustness of infrastructure systems to social and environmental variation, using the example of urban water systems in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area.  

At Princeton, Adam worked with Simon Levin and Elke Weber on the role of uncertainty, trust, and attention in fragmented regional infrastructure systems undergoing transitions. The work takes empirical inspiration from the implementation of sustainable infrastructure transitions in the U.S., including EV charging networks, green stormwater improvements, and advanced water treatment. In addition, he is working with Emma Zajdela in the Levin Lab to understand how institutional design of expert consultation processes in policy systems can affect decision making and the ability of policy systems to address complex resource problems.