RFF Announces Fellowship Awardees for 2015–2016 Academic Year
Washington DC – Eight academic fellowship and internship awardees have been named by Resources for the Future(RFF) 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 2015–2016 academic year:
Joseph L. Fisher Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships
Michelle Marcus, a PhD candidate in economics at Brown University, is studying the childhood health effects of local pollution (specifically, the effects of gasoline reformulation on childhood asthma and of leaking underground gasoline storage tanks on infant health).
Davide Cerruti, a PhD candidate in agricultural and resource economics at the University of Maryland, is conducting research on air pollution and transportation.
Ashley Vissing, a PhD candidate in economics at Duke University, is focusing on competition, matching, and lease terms for shale gas leases.
Gilbert F. White Postdoctoral Fellowships
Ujjayant Chakravorty, a professor in the Department of Economics at Tufts University, will visit RFF and work on a variety of energy topics, including modeling of world gas and coal markets to estimate how US policy affects Chinese emissions, comparisons of quantity versus proportional mandates for renewable energy (such as in the United States and the European Union), and the effects of electrification in the Phillipines.
E. Somanathan, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, will visit RFF and work on estimating and predicting damages from climate change in the Indian agricultural and manufacturing sectors.
John V. Krutilla Research Stipend
Patrick Bayer and Alexander Ovodenko, postdoctoral researchers and lecturers in the Department of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis, will use their stipend for work on the local politics and economics of shale gas development and regulation in the United States.
Walter O. Spofford, Jr., Memorial Internship Program
Cheng Xu, a PhD student in economics at George Washington University, will spend the summer at RFF working with Fellow Zhongmin Wang on Chinese shale gas development and with Fellow Jhih-Shyang Shih on collecting energy data in China.
Resources for the Future (RFF) is an independent, nonprofit research institution in Washington, DC. Its mission is to improve environmental, energy, and natural resource decisions through impartial economic research and policy engagement. RFF is committed to being the most widely trusted source of research insights and policy solutions leading to a healthy environment and a thriving economy.
Unless otherwise stated, the views expressed here are those of the individual authors and may differ from those of other RFF experts, its officers, or its directors. RFF does not take positions on specific legislative proposals.
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