RFF Announces 2006-07 Fellowship Program Award Recipients

RFF Announces Recipients Of Fellowship Program Awards For 2006-07 Academic Year

FOR RELEASE: May 8, 2006

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Nine academic fellowships and special internship awardees have been named by Resources for the Future to conduct environmental and energy research during the coming year. The awards, which provide stipends and program support for the recipients, are selected through a competitive process and are funded by special gifts to the RFF endowment. For more information about these programs, see Fellowships and Internships.

Winners for the 2006-07 academic year in each award program are:

Joseph L. Fisher Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships

• Francisco Aguilar, a PhD candidate in the School of Renewable Natural Resources at Louisiana State University, will finish his research on determinants influencing the location of manufacturers of forest products in Louisiana.
  
• Catherine Ashcraft, a PhD candidate in the Environmental Policy Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will complete her dissertation on cooperative management and transboundary river governance for two international rivers, the Danube and the Nile.
  
• Deepa Aravind, a PhD candidate in the Department of Management and Global Business, Rutgers University, will finish her dissertation on firms, environmental self-regulation through certifiable standards under implementation of ISO 14001 environmental management systems.

Walter O. Spofford, Jr. Memorial Intern

• Tingting Yan, a graduate student in the Department of Geosciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, will join RFF this summer to pursue modeling of water resources.

Gilbert F. White Postdoctoral Fellow

• Arik Levinson, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Georgetown University, will be in residence at RFF to conduct research on the pollution-intensity of U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade in the decade since the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Fellowships in Environmental Regulatory Implementation

• James T. Hamilton, Charles S. Sydnor Professor of Public Policy, professor of economics and political science, and director of undergraduate studies, Duke University, will document the origins and outcomes of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Conservation Reserve Program established by the Farm Security Act of 1985.
  
• Douglas Eisinger, Program Manager, the University of California, Davis/Caltrans, Air Quality Project and Director, Transportation Policy and Planning, Sonoma Technology, Inc., will study the implementation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's enhanced motor vehicle inspection and maintenance program.
  
• Shalini Vajjhala, Fellow, Resources for the Future, will research environmental justice under Executive Order 12898, "Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority and Low-Income Populations," and associated state-level legislation dating back more than 30 years, as well as some from communities with much newer programs.

John V. Krutilla Research Stipend

• Jennifer Alix-Garcia, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Montana-Missoula, is the recipient of the first annual Krutilla Research Award. She will use her stipend to study the mechanisms behind the observed negative effect of inequality on deforestation in Mexico.

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Resources for the Future, an independent and nonpartisan Washington, D.C., think-tank, seeks to improve environmental and natural resource policymaking worldwide through objective social science research of the highest caliber.