Gokul Sampath

Doctoral Candidate

Gokul Sampath is a doctoral student in International Development and Planning at the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP). His research focuses primarily on issues of water access and quality in developing countries. Gokul uses archival, spatial, econometric methods to answer distributive questions about who gets access to water, where, when, and how in rural and urban South Asia. At DUSP, he currently teaches the department’s introductory course on international development. Prior to this, he worked as a teaching assistant for two of the department’s core courses, Quantitative Reasoning and Introduction to Spatial Analysis. 

Before coming to MIT, Gokul served as the Monitoring and Evaluation Lead at One Acre Fund - Tanzania, evaluating programs to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. He gained experience in monitoring and evaluation as a Senior Research Associate at the Jameel - Poverty Action Lab, where he ran randomized evaluations of water conservation and irrigation programs in drought prone areas of western India. His experience as a Fulbright-Nehru scholar working in rural India motivated him to pursue interests in water access and international development. Gokul completed his M.A. in Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University, and his B.S. degree at the University of California, Davis.