Open Postdoctoral Position: Equitable Access to Education Project

Stanford Impact Labs (SIL) is an initiative at Stanford University that invests in highly motivated teams of scholars and practitioners—impact labs—to generate new insights and solutions to persistent social problems. To begin in September 2025, Stanford Impact Labs is now accepting applications to the following postdoctoral fellowship program opportunity.

Professors Irene Lo and Itai Ashlagi and the Equitable Access to Education Project are seeking a diverse pool of applicants who wish to join a team-based, collaborative community and who value the different skills, expertise, and perspectives necessary to design, conduct, sustain, and disseminate public impact research. We encourage applications from individuals from a broad diversity of PhD-granting institutions, backgrounds, and life experiences who would strengthen and diversify our community of scholars. 

This is a one year position with the option to renew for a second year, pending funding.

The Stanford Impact Lab on Equitable Access to Education provides algorithmic and data-driven solutions providing fairer access to public educational resources. The lab enables school districts to optimize large-scale equitable resource allocation decisions, including how to zone schools, and where to offer specialized programs, increase school capacity, or assign teachers.

Based on their expertise, the postdoctoral fellow will engage with the lab community on a variety of projects such as: 

• mechanisms for fair allocation under uncertainty, such as teacher assignment, program/facility location, and resource augmentation or reduction
• information provision in education matching markets
• computationally tractable approaches to school redistricting with choice
• aggregating community feedback on resource allocation policies. 

Projects will be defined and scoped by the postdoc collaboratively with lab PIs. In addition, the postdoctoral fellow will have opportunities to work closely with the lab’s school district partners, and will support the lab by leading outreach to other school districts in the lab’s network interested in taking a socio-technical approach to assigning educational resources. 

Mentorship Structure

The postdoctoral fellow will be supervised by Professors Irene Lo and Itai Ashlagi and will collaborate with research scholars, staff, and students affiliated with the project. Mentorship of the postdoctoral fellow will be structured according to research and professional interests. 

In addition, a goal of SIL's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program is to create a diverse community of scholars who are committed to producing research that has a positive impact on society. Postdoctoral fellows will engage with one another and with the Stanford Impact Labs team and community by participating in professional development, cohort-building, and other programming activities.

Qualifications

• Completion of all doctoral requirements within the past three years and no later than September 1, 2025
• Has research expertise on mechanism design or optimization approaches to resource allocation. Sub-areas of interest include:
  • Dynamic mechanism design
  • Robust optimization and optimization under uncertainty
  • Information design, preference elicitation, and social choice
  • Applied optimization and fast computation
• Demonstrates excellent written and verbal communication skills for both academic and non-academic audiences
• Is committed to advancing solutions to social problems through rigorous research, and communicating research findings to diverse audiences, including non-academic audiences
• Wishes to grow their collaborative research skills and ability to partner with organizations  

Candidates will be evaluated according to their:

• Scientific record and potential
• Commitment to pursuing scholarship that can impact public policy or social outcomes
• Potential contribution to the research team
• Potential contribution to the Stanford Impact Labs Postdoctoral Fellowship program and the educational activities, goals, and community of Stanford Impact Labs
• Potential for scholarly careers that will contribute to addressing historical inequities and advancing diversity through their research, teaching, and service

Timeline

• Priority deadline: Monday, February 17, 2025 
• Final deadline: Monday, March 3, 2025 
• Review of applications will begin on February 18, 2025. Applications will be evaluated on a rolling basis. Those advancing will be notified and may be asked to submit additional materials, including letters of recommendation, and may be invited to interview. Please do not send emails asking about your status; you will be contacted by the faculty lead if you are advancing in the review process. To apply: To be ensured of full consideration, please send your complete application in a single PDF to SILpostdoc@stanford.edu with the subject line: “SIL Postdoc_Lo_Ashlagi”.

How to Apply 

To be ensured of full consideration, please send your complete application in a single PDF to SILpostdoc@stanford.edu with the subject line: “SIL Postdoc_Lo-Ashlagi”.

Complete applications should include:

1. Letter of interest explaining your motivation to become a postdoc with the respective research lab through the Stanford Impact Labs postdoctoral fellowship program (500 words max).
2. Short responses to the following three prompts, in 300 words or less for each:
   1. Please provide a short description of your dissertation research and broader research agenda.
   2. How does your research training and expertise prepare you to make progress towards understanding and identifying practical solutions to social problems? 
   3. In what ways have you contributed towards and/or demonstrated a commitment to inclusion, equity, and diversity through your academic career, and how do you plan to advance these commitments professionally?
3. CV: Provide a curriculum vitae of no more than 5 pages.
4. One representative writing sample.

The expected base pay for this position is $82,278. The pay offered to the selected candidate will be determined based on factors including (but not limited to) the qualifications of the selected candidate, budget availability, and internal equity.

Stanford University is an affirmative action and equal opportunity employer, committed to increasing the diversity of its workforce. It welcomes applications from women, members of minority groups, veterans, persons with disabilities, and others who would bring additional dimensions to the university's research and teaching mission.