INSTITUTE FOR POLICY RESEARCH

Elaine Adames-Jimenez
Class: 2028
Major(s): Global Health and Sociology

Elizabeth Alcala
Class: 2026
Major(s): Biological Sciences and Anthropology

• Assisting with a case study of Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) that utilizes anthropological methods to investigate how social context, identity, and meaning influence how individuals respond to illness and form a mind-body connection.
• Transcribing qualitative interviews, organizing demographic data, and identifying common themes across the participants' experiences. 

Kiran Bhat
Major(s): Social Policy and Cognitive Science
Class: 2026 

• Analyzing data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program to study how water insecurity impacts maternal and child health outcomes in Mozambique. 

Sofia Castano-Largo
Class: 2027
Major(s): Environmental Policy and Culture Major

Dr. Michelle Shumate

• Assisting with data collection and analysis to help develop the sampling frame for the Purpose-Oriented Networks (PONs).
• Facilitating the coordination of interviews and deployment of surveys to the PONs.

Suditi Challa
Class: 2028
Major(s): Industrial Engineering and Political Science

• Exploring how elite lawyers outside of government influence financial policy by helping major institutions communicate with regulators.
• Analyzing data on Federal Reserve meetings to better understand how these interactions shape policy.

Ishan Chawla 
Class: 2027
Major(s): Economics

Anna Feng
Class: 2027
Major(s): Economics, BIP, and Math

• Managing participant intake and data workflows for recruitment, screening, and interviews to support research on how people navigate political disagreement and collaborate across opposing views.

Sherry Huang
Class: 2026
Major(s): Psychology and Data Science

Dr. Lori Ann Post

• Drafting IRB form, leveraging supervised machine learning models and granular programmatic data to identify factors predicting uptake of a community-based overdose prevention program.

• Making Python notebooks documenting approaches and methods used for processing mortality data.

Nathaniel Janssen
Class: 2027 
Major(s): Legal Studies and Political Science

Samantha Junco
Class: 2027
Major(s): RTVF and Psychology

• Investigating how stress becomes biologically embedded in the body.
• Examining how early life and recent stressors relate to long-term physical and mental health outcomes.

Michael Jurek
Class: 2027
Major(s): Learning Sciences and Political Science

Dr. Mesmin Destin

• Researching the methods of building stronger relationships between K-12 teachers and college faculty and students in schools.

Yanira Kaplan
Class: 2026
Major(s): Psychology and Sociology

• Contributing to the expansion of the After the JD Project, a longitudinal study of lawyers’ careers after entering the bar in 2000.
• Assisting with integrating a new cohort of lawyers to examine the impacts of transitions in presidential administration and COVID-19 on legal careers.

Chloe Liu
Class: 2026
Major(s): Statistics

• Investigating patterns of women in the U.S. military.
• Using social network analysis to research how corporate communications are changed by parental leaves.

Anita Lo
Class: 2026
Major(s): Biological Sciences and Global Health

• Conducting literature review on the impacts of air pollution on children's neurodevelopment and assisting with day-to-day web-lab tasks, including the processing of blood samples.

Maya Mubayi
Class: 2026
Major(s): Mathematics and Statistics

Dr. Elizabeth Tipton

• Collecting data and designing a website to highlight the impact of Institute of Education Sciences grant funding.

Gracey Ninmer
Class: 2027
Major(s): Elementary Teaching and Psychology

Dr. Cynthia Coburn

Mitra Nourbakhsh
Class: 2026
Major(s): Journalism and International Studies

Kayla Park
Class: 2026
Major(s): Neuroscience

Dr. Edith Chen

Henry Park
Class: 2026
Major(s): Data Science

Amara Patel
Class: 2028
Major(s): MMSS and Dance

Alexa Pryor
Class: 2028
Major(s): Cognitive Science

Dr. Terri Sabol and Dr. Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

Sarah Serota
Class: 2027
Major(s): Journalism and Economics

• Exploring how the mixed-delivery preschool system is operating in Chicago, including how community-based early childhood education and care organizations are experiencing the expansion of universal Pre-K.

Annika Shah
Class: 2028
Major(s): Biological Sciences and Legal Studies

• Examining how everyday people perceive the success of free speech appeals in cases involving biased speech, and the individual faces workplace consequences such as being fired. 

Aneela Shemsu
Class: 2028
Major(s): Social Policy and Global Health

Terrell Smith
Class: 2027
Major(s): History and Economics

Quinn Smith
Class: 2026
Major(s): Sociology and Global Health

Dr. Doron Shiffer-Sebba

Prach Thaewanaramitkul
Class: 2026
Major(s): MMSS and Data Science

Alex Tobias
Class: 2026
Major(s): Economics, Psychology, Integrated Marketing and Communications

• Supporting a project investigating environmental lead exposure in the Chicago area, with a focus on health effects, disparities, and associated policy implications.

• Coordinating participant scheduling and protocol administration for the Connections Study Pilot.
• Supporting an NIH grant launch by researching and identifying appropriate measures.
• Managing data-related tasks for the Mentoring and Health Study.
• Examining how the unique challenges faced by Black youth shape academic achievement and physical health.

Evelyn Wang
Class: 2027
Major(s): Communication Studies, Economics, and Political Science

• Analyzing university faculty handbooks and tenure contract policies to evaluate and compare commitments to academic freedoms.

Grace Wu
Class: 2027
Major(s): TBD

• Analyzing university faculty handbooks to assess their commitments to academic freedom, tenure, and other employment-related promises, focusing on how these benefits are defined and protected.

Dr. Bernard Black

• Examining the SEC short sale experiment and a set of related studies on its indirect effects, evaluating evidence of specification search.
• Cleaning and standardizing mortality data for downstream analysis of demographic and regional mortality patterns.

Camille Xu
Class: 2027
Major(s): Economics

Stacy Yoon
Class: 2026
Major(s): Biological Sciences and Global Health

• Conducting surveys and assisting with data collection about patient experiences during a clinical trial testing the use of a diabetes educational toolkit.
• Analyzing collected data to understand the educational needs of diabetes mellitus patients.

Jinhe Zhao
Class: 2025
Major(s): Economics and Statistics 

• Collecting data, conducting quantitative analysis, and producing visualizations, descriptive statistics, and causal analysis.
• Looking at questions related to how the federal bureaucracy works and what special interests do to influence it.