INSTITUTE FOR POLICY RESEARCH

Alexis Boe
Class: 2025
Major(s): Biology and Neuroscience

• Exploring the relationship between mentorship, coping resources, and physical health of college-age mentors and young mentees

Genni Bogdanowicz
Class: 2024
Major(s): Social Policy and Legal Studies

• Conducting data analysis and visualization for various projects and helping train and manage new research assistants.

Aidan Boleyn-Fitzgerald
Class: 2025 
Major(s): Political Science and Environmental Policy 

• Compiling a literature review to educate policymakers on the effects of water shocks on maternal and infant health 

Alexandre Brunet
Class: 2024
Major(s): Mathematical Methods in Social Science (MMSS) and Economics

Dr. James Spillane

Haley Cha
Class: 2026
Major(s): Sociology and Economics

• Analyzing COVID-19 mortality data and researching the efficacy of early vaccine rollouts in preventing excess mortality

Salil Chandramohan 
Class: 2025
Major(s): Economics

• Preparing an NIH proposal focused on drug overdose fatality among the elderly population
• Leveraging data on older adults who were subject to drug overdose incidents in order to inform the development of effective interventions and to facilitate targeted outreach efforts

Teal Coil-Otto
Class: 2025
Major(s): Applied Mathematics and Statistics

• Helping with user testing and data collection for a toolkit that educates people with diabetes on how to implement treatments

Spencer Cook
Class: 2024 
Major(s): Social Policy 

Dr. Cynthia Coburn

• Assisting with research focused on how school districts can achieve alignment and continuity in Pre-K through 3rd grade math instruction
• Processing qualitative data and writing internal memos that analyze the strategies of stakeholders to elicit their impact on students’ learning

Claire Derksen
Class: 2025 
Major(s): Neuroscience 

• Examining how unique life experiences and challenges influence academic achievement and health in Black youth

• Conducting a literature review on racial capitalism and adjacent topics in political science literature between 2000 and 2022

Madeline Friedman 
Class: 2025 
Major(s): Cognitive Science 

Dr. Sandra Waxman 

• Exploring the connection between language and conceptual development in infants and toddlers with a focus on examining how language and cognitive advancements are interconnected 
• Conducting research using a cross-linguistical approach, studying infants and young children acquiring various languages such as English, Mandarin, Korean, Spanish, French, and Italian

Joy Fu
Class: 2024 
Major(s): Linguistics and Data Science 

• Researching whether there are particularly “Chicago” ways of speaking English, whether these are changing over time, and how language is connected to people’s life experiences, histories, and perspectives in the area

Jamie Gall
Class: 2025 
Major(s): Economics

• Analyzing the effect of having a White or Black-sounding name in obtaining access to legal counsel and exploring policy responses

Shanti Gallivan
Class: 2024 
Major(s): Sociology and Global Health

• Exploring how experiences and stress during pregnancy affect pregnant people’s and their babies’ health
• Exploring how unique life experiences, challenges, and triumphs shape health and academic achievement for Black youth

Lilah Goldberg
Class: 2025
Major(s): Human Development in Context and Global Health

 Dr. Kimberly Yuracko

• Reviewing and updating the "Employment Law, Cases and Materials" (University Casebook Series) 9th edition, preparing the next casebook edition for publication 
• Researching new and relevant employment law cases to include in the 10th edition casebook

Elleiana Green
Class: 2026
Major(s): Journalism and Political Science 

Dr. Onnie Rogers

• Investigating specific cultural-historical moments and understanding how multiracial individuals understand their racial identity based on these

Divya Gupta
Class: 2025
Major(s):  Journalism and Economics

• Quantitatively analyzing two-generation (2Gen) education programs that aim to advance the economic mobility of families and child development

Noor Hamid
Class: 2025
Major(s): Economics, Psychology, Entrepreneurship and Arabic

Dr. Ivuoma Onyeador

• Analyzing the effects of current affirmative action policies on different subgroups in college admissions and job selection processes through deliberative literature reviews

Violet Hamlin
Class: 2025
Major(s): Economics and Mathematics 

• Researching how varying levels of bureaucratic discretion and decentralization affects governmental efficiency in Italy

Ben Hempker
Class: 2025
Major(s): Political Science and Mathematical Methods in Social Sciences (MMSS)

• Analyzing longitudinal survey data collected throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to better understand changes to political opinions, mental health, and misinformation
• Researching the causes of recent political polarization in American democracy with panel data from 2019 to 2021
• Evaluating changing attitudes and political messaging by congressional candidates in recent years

Baz Holifield
Class: 2025
Major(s): Linguistics and Theatre

Dr. Rob Voigt

• Using computational linguistics to study media representations of gun violence, with a focus on the portrayal of race

Wendy Klunk
Class: 2024
Major(s): Human Development in Context

Dr. Hannes Schwandt

• Happiness economics and worker satisfaction trends

Joann Lenart
Class: 2024
Major(s): Political Science and Legal Studies

• Adding on to the Presence2Influence project by coding field notes from sites of Global Environmental Governance to see how gender appears and analyzing its impact in shaping Indigenous Peoples and other communities that engage in global governance

Tyler Lennon
Class: 2024
Major(s): Sociology and International Studies 

• Researching the developing effects of climate change on housing and insurance markets, looking at how insurers and homeowners are managing and reevaluating risk and how that reevaluation is reflected through market price mechanisms. 

Henry Li
Class: 2026
Major(s): Mathematical Methods in Social Science (MMSS) and Sociology

• Assisting in building U.S. case law networks in history using NLP models
• Conducting GIS analysis of geographical diffusion of laws in a concentrated period of time and repercussion of overturned cases 
• Conducting GIS and network analysis of street monitoring

Michaiah Ligon
Class: 2025
Major(s): Psychology, Learning and Organizational Change

Dr. Ivuoma Onyeador

Kendall McKay
Class: 2024
Major(s): Political Science and English Literature

• Researching the creation and modification of federal profit regulations and their effects on illegal dollar-per-day wages cases

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

Amelia Montagnino
Class: 2024 
Major(s): Psychology, Global Health, and Mathematics 

• Reviewing literature to assess recent trends in adolescent depression and anxiety  
• Supporting efforts for the Biology, Identity, and Opportunity study, analyzing how racial and ethnic stressors affect biological stress measures and the academic outcomes of high school students
  

Neha Navrange
Class: 2025
Major(s): Psychology and Global Health Studies

• Crafting a literature review on the potential economic and social impacts of universal health coverage

Kurtis Nelson
Class: 2025
Major(s): Data Science and Political Science

• Investigating who governs U.S. trade associations as well as whose interests these associations represent and why
• Studying the role of race in obtaining legal representation 

Alaina Parr
Class: 2026
Major(s): Social Policy and American Studies 

Dr. Cynthia Coburn

• Reviewing the impact of research-practice partnerships focused on continuous improvement efforts in math classrooms for young children

William Pattie 
Class: 2024
Major(s): MMSS, Math, Economics and Data Science

Olivia Peixoto da Silva
Class: 2025
Major(s): Biology, Psychology and Philosophy

Mathieu Rojas Egoavil
Class: 2026
Major(s): MMSS and Economics

Milan Shah
Class: 2026
Major(s): Electrical Engineering 

Abhav Soni
Class: 2024
Major(s): Social Policy 

Tatum Thomas
Class: 2026 
Major(s): Data Science and Global Health 

Dr. Michelle Shumate 

• Researching a measure of client outcomes based on the trajectories of care to introduce the most effective system for resource distribution 
• Investigating the existing state-level help-seeking system and healthcare policies to address prevailing disparities within the system 

Amelia Vasquez
Class: 2024
Major(s): Social Policy and Political Science

• Evaluating the effects of the Chicago Universal Pre-K program on schools, childcare providers, and families using a combination of statistical methods and qualitative interviews 

Nelianne Warner
Class: 2024
Major(s): Psychology 

• Researching the impact of the isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic and the social justice movements of 2020 on the development of gender identity and racial identity, and the intersection of the two; assisting with and supporting other projects in the DICE Lab

Binhao Wu
Class: 2025
Major(s): Psychology and Social Policy

• Exploring and examining the ethnic-racial identity development, self-concept clarity, and assimilation patterns of East Asian international and East Asian American students