INSTITUTE FOR POLICY RESEARCH

Sarah Abara
Class: 2025
Major(s): Data Science and Social Policy

• Investigating anti-CRT legislation in various states and specifically school board politics and how the politics of school boards contribute to the unequal educational opportunities

Rahul Aggarwal*
Class: 2024
Major(s): Neuroscience

• Qualitatively researching how and why older adults misuse opioids by interviewing physicians, providers, and specialists about their experiences and perceptions regarding older adults' opioid misuse

Khadija Ahmed
Class: 2025
Major(s): Journalism

Eman Akhtar*
Class: 2023
Major(s): Social Policy, MMSS, Statistics

• Two-generation qualitative analysis of the HOPE Toledo Promise scholarship 

Samantha Anderer
Class: 2024
Major(s): Journalism and Environmental Science

• Researching the connection between health and factors including race, economics, and education
• Examining how inequalities in these areas can affect wellness outcomes

Beatrice Bailey*
Class: 2024
Major(s): Cognitive Science and Statistics 

Emily Chan*
Class: 2025
Major(s): Economics

• Analyzing the effects of subjective temporal distancing on the disparities between Black and White Americans' perceptions of present-day racism

Anna Chen
Class: 2024
Major(s): Social Policy and Music 

• Exploring the impact of instructional policy and guidelines on teachers' classroom practices
• Reviewing the impact of continuous improvement initiatives in education on building individual and organizational capacity

Zorina (Zihan) Chen*
Class: 2023
Major(s): Sociology and Political Science

• Studying the impacts of the permanent closure of Lincoln College on students' educational pathways
• Patterns of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) prescription and patients' access to PrEP
• Patterns of siblings' co-residence in adulthood
• The effects of COVID-19 deaths on the composition of the U.S. electorate
• The relationships between natal family characteristics and cohort change in U.S. women's family formation

Vicky Chung
Class: 2024
Major(s): Biological Sciences

• Analyzing the effects that stress has on pregnancy during gestation, as well as the connection that socioeconomic status has on these factors

Ari Crockett
Class: 2023
Major(s): Journalism

• Reviewing how discrimination is studied and measured through literature review

Elizabeth Dudley
Class: 2024
Major(s): Art History, Economics, and Design Studies Certificate

• Examining changes in education crowdfunding relating to time, public school funding, and economic fluctuations

Ellie Garcia
Class: 2024
Major(s): Neuroscience

• Researching pragmatic language skills in children with autism, or fragile x syndrome, and their first-degree relatives
• Investigating prosodic patterns as an indicator of genetic predisposition to autism

Sarah Germer
Class: 2023
Major(s): Biological Sciences and Psychology

• Exploring the effects of mentoring on the physical health of college-age mentors and young mentees
• Examining how the experiences of African American students affect their physical health

Aditi Ghei
Class: 2023
Major(s): Economics

Dr. Julia Behrman and Dr. Lori Beaman

• Researching the impact of spouses' dyadic perspectives on gender, family, and reproduction in determining important demographic outcomes

Yulan Guo
Class: 2024
Major(s): Computer Science and English

Dr. Lincoln Quillian

Sophia Huang
Class: 2025
Major(s): Sociology and Global Health

• Analyzing data from the Local Youth Risk Behavior Survey to assess the impact of alcohol use on the health of sexual and racial minority youth in the U.S.
• Evaluating sexual identity and behavior along with health behaviors, like alcohol use, HIV vulnerability, and mental health

Kirsten Huh
Class: 2023
Major(s): Journalism

• Exploring the causes and consequences of political polarization in the U.S.
• Analyzing how mass communication influences citizens’ opinions
• Studying COVID-19 on a state level basis

Sara Kadoura
Class: 2023
Major(s): Journalism, Legal Studies, and a minor in Sociology

• Analyzing court documents, case law, statutes, media coverage, and press releases to assess institutional responsibility for Catholic priest sexual abuse over time

Hannah Kim
Class: 2024
Major(s): MMSS and Social Policy

• Analyzing the impact of the double pandemic, COVID-19 and racial violence, on adolescents' health

Emily Lam
Class: 2024
Major(s): Biological Sciences and Science in Human Culture

• Investigating the relationship between the rates of technology use and diabetes complications in patients with diabetes in the COVID-19 era

Allison Macdonald
Class: 2023
Major(s): Linguistics and English

• Using computational linguistics to identify and analyze racial bias in courtroom proceedings, focusing particularly on police testimony regarding gangs

Hassan Mohammad
Class: 2024
Major(s): Neuroscience and Psychology

• The Global SARS-CoV-2 Surveillance Project (GASSP)
• Creating and refining murder profiles for mass shooters in the U.S. from online databases including the Violence Project to see patterns in behavior and weapons used

Zidi Mu*
Class: 2024
Major(s): Psychology

• Examining factors that contribute to resilience and physical health of disadvantaged African American youth

Emia Musabegovic
Class: 2024
Major(s): Communication Studies

• Uncovering the barriers those seeking help for hardships encounter in their search
• Researching how to make the systems that provide this support as useful as they can be for their communities

Yola (Angel) Mzizi
Class: 2023
Major(s): Journalism, Sociology, and a minor in Global Health Studies

• Analyzing discriminative hiring practice

Aniekan Odong*
Class: 2025
Major(s): Political Science

• Investigating how the anti-CRT (critical race theory) movement and rhetoric has spread in the U.S. and manifested into policy

Saul Pink
Class: 2025
Major(s): Journalism

• Researching if the amount or quality of sleep people get is related to brain function and how sleep and brain function change over time
• Helping recruit 450 Chicagoans to participate in the study

Lahari Ramini*
Class: 2024
Major(s): Cognitive Science

• Examining current tools used to measure water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) in institutions such as hospitals, prisons, and schools
• Assessing the health impact and validity of these measurements

William Secker
Class: 2023
Major(s): Economics

• Preparing papers for submission that analyze the effects of Italian migrant regularization policies

Julia Shalansky
Class: 2023
Major(s): Human Development in Context and Global Health

• Helping the COAST lab address large societal issues of racial inequality through biosocial science

Jasmine Sinchai
Class: 2025
Major(s): Economics and Communication Studies

• Investigating how race-based social stressors affect adolescents
• Analyzing the impact of an ethnic-racial identity intervention on high schoolers’ academic outcomes and biological stress systems

Maia Smith*
Class: 2024
Major(s): History and Economics

• Examining why certain groups of people got COVID-19 and what health policies help society combat the disease

Leila Stoll*
Class: 2025
Major(s): Psychology and Economics

• Researching how Chicago pre-K programs are financed and how the rollout of universal pre-K during COVID-19 has affected the enrollment and availability of community-based programs

Jamison Stout
Class: 2024
Major(s): Social Policy

• Examining how districts and schools are working to improve elementary science education in response to newly enacted state science education standards (the Next Generation Science Standards)

E-D Tadese*
Class: 2023
Major(s): Psychology

Donny Tou
Class: 2025
Major(s): Social Policy and Economics

• Investigating how collective responses against complex social challenges are created and sustained when actors' incentives are misaligned and formal structures through which to pursue coordinated action are absent
• A set of comparative case studies focusing on cross-sector collaborations within King County, WA, will be conducted

Brian Vogel
Class: 2023
Major(s): Legal Studies, Global Health, and Music Performance

• Evaluating contractual language in university guidelines to better determine the legal obligations of universities to their students

Anna Wander
Class: 2024
Major(s): Journalism, International Studies, and BIP minor

• Analyzing student voter registration and turnout

Lauren Wang
Class: 2025
Major(s): Biology and Global Health Studies

• Analyzing how mentoring relationships and coping resources affect the physical health of middle school and college students over time

Mia Xia
Class: 2025
Major(s): Social Policy

• Studying the impact of structural racism, sexism, and violence on Black girls' mental health and the potential of the interventionist program, Working on Womanhood (WOW), in addressing and mitigating harm

Melinda Xu
Class: 2023
Major(s): Economics and Chemistry

Dylan Yan*
Class: 2025
Major(s): MMSS and Economics

• Analyzing data sets to understand better the characteristics of different demographic groups receiving SNAP benefits
• Researching policy decisions behind Chicago's universal pre-K rollout

Ji Yoon Yang
Class: 2024
Major(s): Political Science and a minor in Legal Studies

• Normatively assessing the contract between universities and their students under two different models of higher education—the credentialism view and the human capital view—by examining the language of student handbooks