Faculty

Nicola Chiara

Nicola Chiara, a native of Palermo, Italy, is a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University. He previously earned a laurea summa cum laude in civil engineering at Università degli Studi di Palermo and an M.S. in civil engineering from the University of Texas. In addition, he specialized in quantitative finance at Bocconi University, Milan-Italy. Before entering Columbia's Ph.D. program, he worked in the project management department of the consortium that is designing and building the $6 billion high-speed railway project in northern Italy. Chiara's research is investigating the application of real options theory to infrastructure investments. He is particularly interested in how real options might benefit the decision-making process and the financial viability of BOT infrastructure investments. Currently, he is exploring how to adapt new financial option approaches, such as Monte Carlo methods, to real option modeling of infrastructure investments. Chiara has been a registered professional engineer in Italy since 1997.