Aastha Rajan is a 3rd year Economics Phd student at Northwestern University. Her research interests are related to topics in labor & public economics. She has extensive experience in project management, data analysis, & policy evaluation. Most recently, she worked as a Staff Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers. Prior to starting her PhD, she worked as a Research Assistant at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. She graduated with her Bachelors of Science in Economics from Texas A&M University in 2018.

Gamaliel De La Torre is a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of California, Irvine. He works on topics in labor & public economics, with a particular focus on social safety net programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). His most recent work studies how fiscal decentralization of SNAP can lead to productive & allocative efficiencies in the administration of the program. Prior to joining UCI, he received his bachelor's degree from Emory University.

I am a fifth-year PhD candidate in economics at Vanderbilt University. My research is in applied microeconomics & lies at the intersection of law, political economy, & economic history. My dissertation work examines the effects of state antitrust laws around the turn of the twentieth century. Before attending graduate school, I worked as a policy analyst at the U.S. Government Accountability Office in Washington, DC. I hold a master’s degree in Economics from Vanderbilt University, a master’s degree in Public Policy from the George Washington University, a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Florida Atlantic University, & a bachelor’s degree in Political Science & German from the University of Missouri.

Priyanka Pimple is currently pursuing her PhD in Economics at the University of Arkansas, with a research focus on development economics & labor force participation. Her work investigates the impact of India's maternity benefit on women's employment decisions & child health outcomes, aiming to inform policies that promote gender equality & economic development. Priyanka is eager to learn & grow through the AMIE Mentorship Program, leveraging the guidance of experienced professionals to enhance her research. Dedicated to addressing socio-economic disparities, she looks forward to engaging with & contributing to the AMIE community.

Aika Aku is an Agricultural Economist at the College of Economics & Business Studies (CoEBS), Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) in Tanzania with vast experience in teaching, research & consultancy. Her area of interest is on crops value chain, rural urban livelihoods, poverty & gender dynamics. Earlier in her carrier she worked as a research assistant in different research organisations such as Agricultural Policy Research in Tanzania (APRA), Innovation for Poverty Action (IPA), World Vegetable Centre (AVRDC), MSU & IFPRI to mention a few. In recent years she was involved in the coordination of an Agricultural Programme for Policy Prioritization through Value Chain Analysis (PPVC) in Tanzania. The project focus is on the sunflower value chain where the study is tracking results on policy reforms & public & private sector responses. Ms. Aku has also worked on & conducted research in value chain development for rice, cashew nuts, & beef.

Pranjal Rawat is a 4th year PhD Candidate in Economics at Georgetown University. His advisors are Prof. John Rust & Prof. Nathan Miller. His research leverages reinforcement learning to improve the design of complex dynamic markets & deep learning to incorporate unstructured data like text & images into consumer choice models. Pranjal has 3 years of work experience as a Data Scientist at American Express & holds Masters & Bachelors in Economics from India.

Haimanot has been working in research, teaching & community outrage programs in HEI's of Ethiopia over ten-years. His research interest falls on Agri-food systems, food security, Anti-Poverty, impact evaluation, climate change, health economics, development economics & related.

I am an Economics Ph.D. student at University of Houston with a strong interest in Economics of Education, Health Economics, and Environmental Economics. I am a doctorate researcher of NSF sponsored PIRE project on climate risk, pollution, and childhood inequalities in low- and middleincome countries and one of my ongoing projects examines the dynamics between natural disaster and educational outcomes in Asian countries. I am also passionate for topics such as social integration, domestic violence, peer effects, and child development.

Kumari Youkta is a Senior Research Fellow at Indian Institute of Technology Patna. Her research interest lies in health economics, healthcare system and development studies.

Hoyoung Yoo is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is broadly interested in labor, urban, and public economics. Specifically, her research focuses on the impact of place-based policies on the local labor market, employing both reducedform and structural methods. For her dissertation, she has been studying the effects of Remote Worker Relocation Programs on local employment and local welfare.