SIL Welcomes 2024 Cohort of Postdoctoral Fellows
When it comes to working for social change, “impact” could be described as the favorite buzzword’s favorite buzzword. So what exactly do we mean when we say it? At Stanford Impact Labs (SIL), we focus on the type of impact that research can have when it contributes to designing and testing concrete solutions to social problems, co-created with experts outside of the university in public, private, and nonprofit sector organizations.
Often, research that is solutions-oriented and anchored in collaborative partnerships requires a different mindset, set of skills, and experience than “traditional” research might. And often, traditional academic pathways do not provide this type of training. The programs we offer at Stanford Impact Labs aim to bridge this gap.
Postdoctoral fellows are one group of scholars we support. Working with postdocs is particularly exciting because they are at a key point in their academic trajectory: in possession of research expertise and in pursuit of fresh ways of shaping their impact agenda moving forward.
The fourth cohort of our postdoctoral fellowship program is a group that brings an inspiring set of skills and experiences to SIL’s training. We’re grateful for the opportunity to support this group in taking their exciting work to new heights!
Ruth Appel, postdoc in the Department of Communication, is focused on the societal impacts and governance of technologies such as social media and generative AI, working with partners to develop solutions that reduce the spread of misinformation, prevent election interference, and promote wellbeing and mental health.
Kristina Gligoric, postdoc with the Natural Language Processing Group, uses and develops computational methods in data science, causal inference, and generative AI for solutions that increase online civility and spur sustainability-focused dietary habits.
Hakan Ozyilmaz, postdoc in the Initiative for Financial Decision-Making, works with partners to design and evaluate alternative financial education programs that seek to improve households’ financial well-being.
Tiziano Piccardi, postdoc in the Human-Computer Interaction Group, focuses on reducing political polarization that can result from AI-based social media curation, as well as on enhancing access to open knowledge platforms like Wikipedia to ensure reliable, free information.
Riley Post, postdoc in the Fletcher Lab, works at the intersection of climate change and drinking water access, identifying funding mechanisms for drinking water utilities that provide affordable drinking water to underserved communities while ensuring utilities obtain the revenues required to maintain reliable water distribution.
Marcela Radtke, postdoc in the Food for Health Equity Lab, works with partners to implement ‘Food as Medicine’ interventions in the healthcare setting to improve diet-related chronic disease risk outcomes in underrepresented populations.
Ben Seiler, postdoc in the Human Trafficking Data Lab, works in partnership with Brazil’s Federal Labor Prosecution Office to reduce labor trafficking and child labor.
Maria Velasquez, postdoc with the IDEAL Provostial Fellowship program, focuses her research on ways to address inequities in housing and schools. In particular, she focuses on the relationship between housing issues and schools for working-class and minoritized families.
Tiffany Yang, postdoc with the SPARK Lab, examines how early childhood experiences influence cognitive development and learning. She focuses in particular on the role of the home environment and family interactions in order to identify culturally situated factors that support the development of foundational cognitive skills in early to middle childhood, especially among underrepresented populations.