Kishan Narayan is a PhD student in Public Policy at Northeastern University in Boston. His research lies at the intersection of development, behavioral, and labor economics, with a particular focus on education, inequality, and institutional design in low- and middle-income countries. His recent work examines how high-stakes examinations, educational institutions, and centralized allocation mechanisms shape access to opportunity and socioeconomic mobility.

Before beginning his PhD, Kishan worked at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy- Ministry of Finance (GoI), and the Development Data Lab on projects related to public finance, political representation, and large-scale administrative data. He holds a master’s degree in Computational Social Science from Northeastern University, Applied Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University and a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Banaras Hindu University. He is also a member of Bahujan Economists, a platform dedicated to supporting researchers, students, and aspirants from historically marginalized caste, tribal, & religious communities in the field of Economics.

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University, specializing in health economics and I will be on the 2026-2027 academic job market. My research focuses on how policy shocks shape mortality and health behavior, with a particular emphasis on substance use and risky behavior. My research in maternal health explores adverse outcomes in different kinds of birth settings, pre-natal drinking and provider response in labor and delivery.

Prior to joining GSU, I worked as a Research Assistant at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics in Germany, contributing to the Gender, Growth and Labor Markets in Low Income Countries program. Outside of economics, I enjoy hiking, camping, and baking.

Farnaz Nasiri is a second-year Ph.D. student in Economics at Penn State University. Her research interests are in applied microeconomics, with a focus on environmental economics. Prior to joining Penn State, she earned her M.A. in Economics from Sharif University of Technology in Iran and her B.Sc. in Materials Science and Engineering.

I am a PhD candidate in Economics at American University in Washington, DC. My research is in applied microeconomics, with a focus on labor, gender, development, and policy evaluation. I am especially interested in how the future of work, technological change, and large-scale shocks shape who works, under what conditions, and with what consequences for inequality.

In my dissertation, I utilize supervised text classifier to generate telework scores for each occupation and study how telework exposure affects women's economic well-being in emerging economies, where gender norms, mobility constraints, and on-site work requirements often restrict women's access to paid employment. A second strand of my research examines the links between environmental change, inequality, and labor markets. I combine applied microeconometrics with machine learning and non-traditional data. My work builds new measures using text-as-data methods as well as remote-sensing techniques using satellite imagery.

Andisheh Riahi is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the University of Memphis. Her current research focuses on international trade in agricultural products and examines how climate change, including extreme weather events, and political factors such as sanctions and geopolitical shocks affect global agri-food trade. She holds a Master of Arts in Economics from the University of Memphis and earned both a Master of Science and a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Economics from the University of Tehran.

Andisheh has independently taught undergraduate courses and served as a graduate teaching assistant for both undergraduate and graduate courses during her Ph.D. program. In July 2025, she received the Graduate Teaching Assistant Award at the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association annual meeting in Denver.

Akash is a Ph.D. Scholar in Economics from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India. His research interests include development economics, focusing on health, labor, and industrial development issues. He holds a master's degree in Economics from IIT Roorkee. His Ph.D. thesis focuses on understanding consumer behavior in the presence of health risks.

Sreyartha is a rising fourth year Economics PhD student. His research interests are in health economics, public policy and development economics. His current projects involve using large scale administrative health datasets to study the causal effects of public policies and external shocks on vulnerable populations. He also studies how institutions shape long run inequality in India. Before starting grad school, Sreyartha worked as a Senior Data Analyst in the Infosys Data Science team.

Meghna Laha is a PhD candidate in Economics at Clemson University with research interests at the intersection of development and education economics. Her dissertation examines the long-run effects of conflict on educational outcomes in India, with a particular focus on disparities across gender. Originally from India, she earned both her bachelor's and master's degrees in Economics from Jadavpur University before pursuing her PhD at Clemson University.

Mahima Rastogi is a PhD scholar (ICSSR Doctoral Fellow) in the School of Economics at the University of Hyderabad, where she is in the final stage of her doctorate. Her research lies at the intersection of climate risk, banking, and financial stability. Her thesis, "Climate Change, Banking and Stock Market in India: Some Issues and Evidence," estimates Indian banks' contribution to systemic risk, surveys banking practitioners on how the sector perceives and governs climate risk, and models how climate policy uncertainty shapes equity-market volatility. She holds a Master's in Financial Economics from the University of Hyderabad and a Bachelor's in Economics from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi.

Basirat Adebimpe Hammed is a PhD candidate in Economics at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Her research interests lie in macroeconomics, international finance and trade, with particular focus on monetary policy transmission mechanisms.

Basirat holds a bachelor's degree in economics, with a minor in Accountancy, from Afe Babalola University, Nigeria. Her published work includes studies on monetary policy uncertainty and bank stability, and on foreign direct investment and economic growth in Nigeria.

She is a member of the Portfolio Team at the Saluki Student Investment Fund, where her work analyzing sector performance and market conditions informs her academic research on how policy shocks move through financial markets. Prior to her doctoral studies, she worked as a Financial and Data Analyst and Accountant, bringing applied financial experience to her academic research on macroeconomic policy.