Past Grantees and Fellows

Indiana recently implemented a statewide $40,000 minimum salary requirement for public school districts. I aim to understand how this seemingly neutral statewide policy can be more attentive to rural needs and discover what local budget decisions result in the highest net benefit for rural communities.

A small number of inappropriately-prescribing physicians drove opioid prescribing increases in the first wave of the U.S. opioid epidemic. This project collects a novel dataset of state medical board actions to determine the nature and extent of investigations and disciplinary actions regarding opioid prescribing.

How do people fulfill their attachment needs across people in their networks, and how do people also meet the needs of others in their network? Proposed studies test novel hypotheses on how reciprocated ties confer unique benefits for individuals (security), dyads (satisfaction), and networks (status).

We evaluate how the choice of policy in ranking college applications affects different sociodemographic groups. Training on four years of application and decision data, we compare ML algorithms with different features removed (e.g., race/ethnicity, major preference) to understand how this changes the applicant ranking.

Recent years have witnessed significant contributions from East Asian culture to the global culture scene. However, in contrast to this evidence, prior studies indicate that East Asians are perceived as less creative than North Americans. In this project, we aim to unravel this puzzle.

Recent years have witnessed significant contributions from East Asian culture to the global culture scene. However, in contrast to this evidence, prior studies indicate that East Asians are perceived as less creative than North Americans. In this project, we aim to unravel this puzzle.

The recent introduction of pay transparency laws marks a significant shift in the labor market, yet a notable gap in research remains in examining its effects. My proposed project seeks to address this gap and examine the gendered implications of pay range transparency policies.

This project investigates the challenges faced by remote supporters of individuals with mental health conditions and explores technology's role in providing support. Through interviews, content analysis, and co-design sessions, it identifies opportunities to improve remote supporters' well-being and develop tailored technological solutions.

We seek to understand users' preferences for spreading polarizing content on an information platform, which is informative for the design of effective platform governance strategies.

This project examines the aspirations of youth of the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve in the Brazilian Amazon. Using a Participatory Action Research methodology, it aims to enhance youth’s capacity to envision and realize projects that align forest conservation with their aspirations of the Good Life.

We examine the long-term effects of welfare-to-work policies by following up on five randomized experiments conducted in the nineties. We link the experimental data to a rich array of datasets held at the U.S. Census Bureau to understand the comprehensive economic and demographic impacts on welfare recipients and their children over a time horizon spanning more than 20 years.

Thanks to the generous time and resources from my ISS fellowship, along with the wonderfully supportive and engaging community of fellows, I completed four new projects examining when ordinary citizens become political advocates in response to social and economic challenges, including unaffordable health care, climate change, and traffic congestion. These papers have been published in top political science, climate change, and transportation journals. One of these projects was a collaboration with ISS fellow Mike Manville.

Lewis's team has conducted four studies that reveal important conditions under which gender bias may emerge in hiring. They have also secured an in principle acceptance for publication of this research at Nature Human Behaviour.

Lewis’s CCSS Fellowship gave him the time to: publish a textbook and 8 peer-reviewed journal articles, write a federal grant that yielded $200,000 in new research funding, publish 6 public-facing articles about behavioral science, and contribute to COVID-19 policy efforts at multiple levels of government. 

We study whether and how companies use a sanctioned form of public communication—quarterly earnings calls—to communicate strategic information with their competitors to coordinate strategic actions and lower competition, thus circumventing antitrust laws. This work will inform policy regarding firm communication and market competition.

This project aims to understand how mindfulness practitioners incorporate mindfulness practice in their daily activities with and without technology, using semi-structured interviews and design workshops. Insights generated from the study will inform the design of mindfulness tools that scaffold novice practitioners' mindfulness journey, adapt and personalize their practice for their mental wellbeing needs.

My project aims to explore agrifood system transitions through enhanced circularity in Kenya. I will synthesize available datasets to examine how, under different policy scenarios and engagement activities, the agrifood system transition can allow us to achieve synergistic outcomes in human and environmental wellbeing.

This research aims to investigate how to ensure just transition of socio-environmental systems to achieve food security and rangeland sustainability in the drylands. It focuses on the Kenyan drylands that support hundreds of thousands of pastoralists whose livelihoods are directly tied to the land.

Using a mixed methods approach, this project systematically examines the landscape of fertility and family leave policies among the largest corporations in the US by surveying Fortune 500 Companies. Investigating the supply side of ART will provide insights on reproductive healthcare access amid rising demand.