Senay Agca

Şenay Ağca is a finance professor at the George Washington University (GW) and the economics program director at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Her research interests are corporate-government dynamics, macro-finance, COVID-19, credit risk, supply chain and political economy. She has worked as a visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund and Sciences Po at various periods since 2006. She has published in major finance and economics journals, and her papers including those with her Ph.D. students have been nominated for best paper awards. She has won diverse grants such as the National Science Foundation Grant, the J. Wendell and Louise Crain Research Fellowship, GW-CIBER research grants, an American Consortium on European Union Studies grant, a GW Institute for Corporate Responsibility grant, and a Dean’s Scholarship. She was one of the key members who worked on developing and launching the IFC-Milken Institute Capital Markets Program at GW.

At the NSF, she directs the economics program, responsible for all aspects of the program. She was the lead program director in managing COVID-19 rapid response proposals in economics and finance, and was awarded a certificate of excellence for these accomplishments from the NSF. Her roles at the NSF include working in developing and managing strategically important research programs for the U.S. She is a program director for Science of Broadening Participation that focuses on understanding factors that enhance as well as barriers that hinder participation and advancement of underrepresented groups in many areas of science. She is a steering committee member for the bioeconomy/biotechnology program focusing on social, ethical, biosafety/biosecurity implications, and coordinating efforts for developing programs in this area. She is a program director of the Future Manufacturing program on cyber-, eco- and bio-manufacturing areas, working on the integration of social sciences with these upcoming fields of manufacturing. She has also worked in running idea labs for Harnessing the Data Revolution, as well as in programs on Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison for Industry and the 2026 NSF idea machine.