Thomas 'Orlando' Da Costa is a visiting exchange student under the Jane Eliza Procter Fellowship program and joined the Levin Lab in Fall 2025.

He received two B.Sc. in Physics and in Mechanics from Sorbonne University in 2020 before entering l'École Normale Supérieure de la rue d'Ulm (ENS Ulm), where he earned his masters in cognitive sciences and participated in a dual-degree with AgroParisTech (Université Paris-Saclay) to complete another masters in environmental economics. Alongside these topics, he followed a public policy-oriented cursus with a minor in environmental sciences, his past research focusing on behavioral factors that could influence pesticides use among farmers or on the consideration of inequality in climate economics.

His research interests lie nowadays in modeling complex socio-ecological systems, at the intersection of biodiversity, climate change, land use, and well-being. He notably wants to explore the bioeconomic relationship of the five main drivers of biodiversity loss: land-use change, invasive alien species, pollution, climate change and resource exploitation.

At Princeton, he will be mentored by Pr. Simon Levin and aims to prepare his PhD thesis plan. He's interested in stochastic models, statistical physics, heterogeneity and the roles of institutions in economics models.