His research focus is matching theory and market design, studying how to create rules that lead to efficient allocation of resources or effective matching between workers and employers, assignment of students to schools, or patients to nursing homes. Jacob holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University, completed under the supervision of Prof. Alvin Roth. Prior to joining Columbia he spent a year as a post-doc researcher in Microsoft Research New England. He holds an M.Sc. and B.Sc. in pure math from Tel Aviv University.