Stanford undergraduates witness challenges and dynamism of life in low- and middle-income countries

Sofia Pesantez, ’24, MS ’25  is the daughter of Colombian and Ecuadorean immigrants, and has traveled to her mother’s native Colombia many times in her life.

But when she learned of the Stanford King Center on Global Development’s Journeys of Inquiry trip to the country this past summer, she jumped at the chance. The Journeys of Inquiry program provides an opportunity for Stanford students to gain firsthand insights into global development issues in low- and middle-income countries. In June, Associate Professor of Economics Melanie Morten and King Center Visiting Associate Professor Santiago Saavedra led a two-week trip that emphasized, among other issues, public health and ecotourism initiatives. About 12 students, mostly sophomores and juniors, participated in this year’s program, the first since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We were on a trip with experts in the field—two world-renowned professors in economics,” says Pesantez, a first-generation college student who plans to attend medical school. “It’s unheard of.”

At the King Center, the Journeys of Inquiries program is just one of several summer and academic-year opportunities for undergraduate students to pursue research on campus and in developing countries around the world. Students can also apply for academic year part-time research fellow positions, full-time summer research positions, and the Ronald I. McKinnon Memorial Fellowship, which funds outstanding research projects for Stanford economics majors writing their thesis. The center also hosts student groups and the global development research symposium where undergraduates can showcase posters of their ongoing work. 17 summer research fellows worked on King Center projects focused on 17 countries, and topics such as immigration law and AI research on political economy, with 33 students also working during the academic year on projects focusing on 21 countries.

In Colombia, Pesantez and her peers visited a public school near Bogotá where Saavedra is studying whether air filters that reduce pollution exposure impact student performance. They next traveled to Nuquí on the Pacific Coast of the country where they met with local business owners, including a woman who runs an ecotourism business and led the students on a tour of a mangrove forest. The students also joined fishermen on an early morning fishing trip.

“Just having conversations with them was very valuable,” Pesantez says. “You can say all you want about overfishing by huge corporations but, when you talk to local fishermen and they tell you themselves that sometimes they don’t make enough money because there aren’t enough fish, that’s a lot more impactful.”

Pesantez says she especially appreciated the opportunity at the end of each day to chat with the professors and her fellow students.

“We’d have conversations about what we learned that day and group reflections at the dinner table,” she explains. “What started out as educational conversations branched out into bonding.”

Exploring Pathways to Greater Financial Inclusion

Dylan Jatwani, ’27, and Jules Lustig, ’27, also traveled to Latin America for their summer research funded by the King Center. They spent about six weeks in Mexico City assisting Associate Professor of Economics Claudia Allende on a project examining how technology can improve financial inclusion and, in particular, increase financing for small and new firms in developing countries. The pair met with government officials, business leaders, and start-up founders and also explored payment systems in Mexico’s mostly cash economy.

Lustig wants to work in finance, so the trip was particularly on point for him.

“Mexico in general is a really vast and growing market,” he says. “There’s so much potential, so I thought it was interesting from the get-go.”

Jatwani, who is interested in medicine and is considering studying economics and biology, said he was intrigued by the idea that financial technology infrastructure have the potential to enable improvements to health care.

“I think it’s really awesome that the King Center prioritizes undergraduate students doing work and research in places that typically we wouldn’t have the opportunity to go,” he says.

Plotting the Path of an Infectious Disease

For Max Yang, ’27 , King Center support meant he could continue his work on campus helping Associate Professor of Medicine Jason Andrews conduct a phylogeographical analysis of tuberculosis (TB) in Latin America. The work seeks to understand how the disease has evolved in the region, better understand how it spreads, and—eventually—to design targeted interventions to eradicate the illness.

“Genomics is such a huge and rapidly evolving field,” Yang says. “It’s really cool to be at the forefront of this stuff.”

Yang’s efforts include working with approximately 14,000 samples of TB genomes and determining paths of transmission across Latin America. TB is a global problem, especially among people who are incarcerated. Andrews has researched and written extensively about the TB crisis in prisons in Latin America and around the world.

Yang is studying human biology with an environmental health concentration. He says he was impressed, at an orientation meeting the King Center hosted for summer research fellows, by the variety of projects the center supported.

“What’s really incredible about the King Center and its summer program specifically is the wide range of opportunities they’re funding,” he says. “It really reflects their attitude toward improving global development. It’s not an issue that can be solved looking solely from a biology, engineering or economic perspective. We need people working on this from all fronts.”