Titus Galama, Ph.D., MBA, is a Senior Economist at the University of  Southern California (USC) Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR), and Director of the CESR Center for the Study of Health Inequality (CSHI), Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. Titus is an award-winning astrophysicist who turned to business/management then policy analysis and economics. Titus Galama was awarded a M.Sc. in Physics in 1995 (cum laude) and a Ph.D. in Astrophysics in 1999 (cum laude) from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, an MBA in 2003 from INSEAD, France/Singapore and a Ph.D. in Economics in 2011 from the University of Tilburg, The Netherlands. He has been at the forefront of several breakthrough discoveries in astrophysics, two of which were considered the 5th and 10th most significant scientific discoveries (in all science fields) of 1997 and 1999, respectively, by Science magazine. After completion of his thesis in astrophysics he worked as a Fairchild Postdoctoral Prize Fellow at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, U.S.A. He has authored over 70 scientific publications in top scientific journals (e.g., six papers in Nature). Following his career in astrophysics, he obtained an MBA from INSEAD at the Singapore and French campuses, and subsequently joined L.E.K Consulting, a global strategy-consulting firm, as a Senior Consultant in the Los Angeles office. Titus joined the RAND Corporation in 2006 and USC’s CESR in 2013. In these positions his focus has been on understanding the substantial disparities in health by socioeconomic status, utilizing economic principles. To this end he has developed structural theoretical models of health and retirement and of the formation of disparities in health between socioeconomic status groups. Titus is Principal Investigator on a National Institute of Aging (NIA) research grant (R01 AG055654; jointly with Dr. Faul, $3,959,935), focussed on identifying modifiable aspects of gene-by-environment interplay in later-life cognitive decline (2017-2022). He was Principal investigator on an NIA grant aimed at improving understanding of disparities in health between socioeconomic status groups (R01; $ 2,500,000; 2010) and recipient of an NIA Independent Scientist Award aimed at improving understanding of disparities in health between education groups (K02; $870,000; 2012).

M.S. Physics, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 12/1995
Ph.D. Astrophysics, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 12/1999
M.B.A. Business, INSEAD Singapore/Paris, 07/2003
Ph.D. Economics, University of Tilburg, The Netherlands, 07/2011

Senior Economist, USC Center for Economic and Social Research, 2013
Professor, Pardee RAND Graduate School, 2012
Visiting Professor, Erasmus University, The Netherlands, 2012
Economist, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, 2006-2013
Senior Policy Analyst, RAND Europe, The Netherlands, 2006-2006
Senior Strategy Consultant, L.E.K. Consulting, Los Angeles, 2003-2005
Fairchild Postdoctoral Prize Fellow in Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology, 1999-2002