David E. Sahn is an international professor of economics in the Division of Nutritional Sciences and the Department of Economics. Since 2015, he has been a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn, Germany. In 2017, he became a senior fellow at the Foundation for International Development Study and Research (FERDI) in Clermont-Ferrand, France. 

His main academic interest is in identifying the solutions to poverty, malnutrition, and disease in developing countries, as well as the determinants of human capital and the role of cognitive and non-cognitive skills in labor market outcomes.