Stanford Impact Labs Welcomes 15 Emerging Scholars

This summer, Stanford Impact Labs is delighted to welcome 15 Stanford PhD students and postdoctoral researchers into the Emerging Scholars Fellowship. The program prepares scholars to work closely with collaborators across the public, private, and social sectors to generate evidence and insights that can be put into practice. In addition to their research, Fellows engage in weekly workshops with Stanford Impact Labs exploring pathways from science to impact, and join a growing network of scholars committed to bridging the gap between academic knowledge and real-world change.

This year's cohort spans a remarkable range of disciplines, geographies, and issue areas. We look forward to supporting the progress they will make.

Protecting health and well-being in vulnerable communities

Zongbo Li, a postdoc in the Health Policy Department (faculty mentor Marissa Reitsma), will collaborate with California Correctional Health Care Services to evaluate programs for testing, treating, and preventing Hepatitis C across California's prison system. Jlateh Vincent Jappah, a Health Policy PhD student (faculty mentor Sara Singer), is partnering with national blood services in Sierra Leone and Ghana to test ways to increase voluntary blood donation. Valeria Gracia Olvera, also a Health Policy PhD student (faculty mentor Marissa Reitsma), is working with the Mexican government to model the health, quality-of-life, and economic impacts of different air pollution reduction strategies. Rhana Hashemi, a Psychology PhD student (faculty mentor Greg Walton), is partnering with Oakland Unified School District to test an intervention that equips teachers to respond to student substance use violations with both high behavioral standards and genuine investment in who those students can become.

Strengthening accountability and civic participation

João Francisco Pugliese, an Economics PhD student (faculty mentor Arun G. Chandrasekhar), is partnering with Politize!, a Brazilian civic education NGO, to test whether the most effective ways to empower citizens to hold their political leaders accountable. Jeremy T. Martin, a postdoc in Political Science (faculty mentor Rob Reich), is examining how philanthropic foundations exercise influence over the nonprofits they fund, working with philanthropic partners to develop practical tools for more democratic funder-grantee relationships.

Governing technology and protecting people online

Anthony Chen, a postdoc in Communication (faculty mentor Jeff Hancock), is evaluating Australia's landmark law banning children under 16 from certain social media platforms — examining whether young people adhere, how it affects their wellbeing, and what unintended consequences arise. Andreas Haupt, a postdoc at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (faculty mentor Sanmi Koyejo), is partnering with a German consumer protection organization to build auditing tools that reveal biases within AI chatbot recommendations.

Housing, displacement, and community stability

Gabriela Rays Wahba, an Economics PhD student (faculty mentor Elena Pastorino), is partnering with the San Francisco Rent Board and Oakland's Rent Adjustment Program to examine the effects of buyouts ("cash for keys") on tenants. Greer Bizzell-Hatcher, a Graduate School of Education PhD student (faculty mentor Philip Fisher), is partnering with the Early Childhood Alliance Onondaga to study how housing insecurity affects young children in one of the highest child-poverty cities in the country. Ben Barrett, a PhD student in the Graduate School of Business (faculty mentor Shoshana Vasserman), is partnering with the French government and wine industry organizations to study decades of EU payments to farmers to pull up their vineyards — examining whether these subsidies reach the right farmers, whether they help or hurt the rural communities that depend on the wine industry, and what lessons they hold for other industries facing similar declines.

Building fairer markets and economic systems

Danielle Handel, an Economics PhD student (faculty mentor Katherine Casey), is partnering with Zambia's Ministry of Mines and Mineral Development to study whether a new network of public gold-buying centers can deliver fairer prices and safer conditions to artisanal miners. Eva Lestant, an Economics PhD student (faculty mentor Melanie Morten), is partnering with informal food vendors and municipal authorities in Bouaké, Côte d'Ivoire to test approaches that help small neighboring vendors pool their purchasing in order to lower their costs and ultimately improve the prices and options available to low-income shoppers. Phedias Theophanous, a Political Science PhD student (faculty mentor Avidit Acharya), is partnering with Stanford's Transportation Department to apply theories of market design to the everyday problem of parking — with the goal of reducing search time, cutting congestion, and lowering emissions in urban environments.