2024–2025 Summer Full-Time Undergraduate RFs

This research project examines the relationship between plastic waste, water contamination, and community perceptions of waste management in rural villages. Using qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with village representatives and survey responses from community members, the study analyzes how social norms, infrastructure limitations, and local governance shape waste disposal behaviors and water pollution risks. The analysis involves thematic coding of interview transcripts in French to identify recurring patterns in attitudes toward waste, perceived barriers to proper disposal, and potential solutions. Additionally, qualitative content analysis will explore differences in perspectives based on geographic, economic, and cultural factors. The research requires strong skills in qualitative data coding, text analysis, and social science methodologies, as well as proficiency in French to accurately interpret interview responses and ensure nuanced understanding of local perspectives.

Faculty supervisor: Giulio De Leo, School of Sustainability - Oceans Department
Focus country(ies): Senegal 
Research fellow: Antonio Kambire, '27, Mathematics

Implementing Blue Food in Indonesia's National Development Plan and National Food Program

We (Center for Ocean Solutions and Center for Human Rights and International Justice) have been working over the past 2 years with the Indonesian National Development Planning Ministry (Bappenas) to integrate fish and other aquatic foods (Blue Foods) into the mid- and long term National Development Plans.; This has been accomplished and we now have the opportunity to work on implementing our policy recommendations in President Prabowo's ambitious National Food Program, designed to combat stunting and malnutrition in children and youth. Megan has gained the kind of experience that will enable her to play a significant part in the projects we will be undertaking in Summer 2025 in Jakarta and elsewhere in Indonesia. These projects will be pilot initiatives that can be scaled up nationally on the basis of what we learn from these initial steps at the local level. We will be working with NGOs (such as IOJI and LeIP), the leading agricultural/marine science university (IPB), and the National Nutrition Agency, the National Finance Ministry and Bappenas to move from the national policy level to implementation at the provincial, district, and local level. Megan will be involved in all phases of the research, drafting of policy briefs, strategic planning, and local site visits. Her previous experience in Indonesia, together with her work at the Stanford Hopkins Marine Lab and other relevant programs and venues, makes her ideally suited for this internship.

Faculty supervisor: David Cohen, School of Sustainability - Social Science Division
Focus country(ies): Indonesia
Research fellow: Megan Woo, '26, International Relations

Implementing traditional and new technology to enhance science exploration in Madagascar

Tracking health outcomes and body conditions in wildlife is often challenging due to limited funds and difficulty in capturing individuals. This project, led by graduate student Alexis Diaz, is a collaboration with the Ranomafana community and the Centre ValBio station in southeastern Madagascar, which has been tracking lemurs for the past 30 years. The aim is to monitor a sifaka population and collect dental health and body size metrics using both traditional and modern technologies. Traditional methods include dental casts to measure tooth growth or decay, while new methods involve the use of an intraoral scanner, commonly used in modern dentistry, to create 3D scans of the entire mouth. Additionally, an undergraduate intern will implement laser photogrammetry, a technique involving a laser monitor attached to a camera, to measure the body size of free-ranging sifakas and potentially track individual growth. The data collected will support a Ph.D. thesis exploring how changes in dental health and body size over time affect the population dynamics of a rare sifaka population. Our students will train with the local team in these new methods, which will provide improved results while being cost-effective and resource efficient. Through this applied and computational research, we aim to implement innovative approaches that can advance local research capabilities and educational opportunities, fostering long-term conservation efforts in local communities that depend largely on low-resource wildlife exploration.

Faculty supervisor: Shripad Tuljapurkar, School of Humanities & Sciences - Biology Department
Focus country(ies): Madagascar
Research fellow: Krystine Vuong, '27, Undeclared

Indian Local Elections Study

India has institutionalized the largest electoral gender quota policy in the world, ensuring that at least 33% of all local elected officials are women. Electoral gender quotas have been implemented in more than 100 countries worldwide, yet evidence from across the globe shows that electoral quotas are unmet 77% of the time. The Inclusive Democracy and Development (ID2) Lab seeks to understand who runs for office and who ultimately becomes politicians in the presence or absence of quota-reserved government seats for women in India. To do so, our lab is assembling the first and most comprehensive database of its kind, which will include data on local election candidacies, outcomes, and the reservation statuses of local government seats. We are seeking an undergraduate research assistant with intermediate to advanced data handling skills in R, Python, or Stata. The research assistant should be able to write code to clean large data sets and should additionally have advanced organizational and time management skills. Prior experience with using data handling software outside of the classroom is a desired qualification.

Faculty supervisor: Soledad Prillaman, School of Humanities & Sciences - Political Science Department, Somer Kambhu Bryant, School of Humanities & Sciences - Political Science Department
Focus country(ies): India
Research fellow: Uttam Shrestha, '26, Computer Science, Abigail Fu, '28, Undeclared

Infectious diseases, environment, global health, and climate change

The research assistant can contribute to different ongoing activities within the lab based on their interests. Our mission is to improve population health by creating high quality evidence about what health interventions work in whom and where, when, and how to implement them. Most of our research is focused on infectious diseases, including malaria, diarrhea, soil-transmitted helminths, and influenza. We use a variety of epidemiologic, computational, and statistical methods, including causal inference and machine learning methods, in pursuit of our mission. Ongoing research projects include: - Randomized trial testing the effect of replacing soil floors with concrete on maternal and child health in Bangladesh - Quantifying the relationship between different housing features in low-income countries and health outcomes - Using causal inference models to determine where preventive malaria interventions are most effective - Developing novel metrics for climate adaptation and resilience at the household level in low- and middle-income countries

Faculty supervisor: Jade Benjamin-Chung, School of Medicine - Epidemiology and Population Health
Focus country(ies): No specific country/regional focus
Research fellow: Britney Bennett, '26, Biomedical Computation

Lead detection in spices and cosmetics

Lead exposure is a major global threat to public health and development, especially in low-income countries where 1 in 2 of children suffer from lead poisoning. As a potent neurotoxin, lead irreversibly damages the brain, permanently lowers IQ, and reduces lifetime earnings. This project aims to test rapid field tools for better detection of lead in cosmetics and spices (x-ray fluorescence, color-changing or app-based tools). The deliverables will include a set of recommendations and reference materials measuring lead in these samples, as well as a clear protocol to be used by a team conducting a lead exposure survey in India.

Faculty supervisor: Jenna Forsyth, School of Medicine - Medicine Department
Focus country(ies): India
Research fellow: Riya Bhatia, '27, Earth Systems

Mobility, Remittances, and Climate Adaptation in Rural Africa

In a recent One Earth paper (Pisor et al., 2023), we outlined a toolkit for combining data on household-level adaptations with environmental time series data to assess which adaptations are being used under what conditions. We included a priori predictions, informed by the ethnographic, archaeological, and demographic literature, about what categories of adaptations – such as migration, savings or storage, and long-distance risk-management networks – should be more common under which kinds of climate variability. We then presented a worked example, drawing on two datasets – World Bank household-level data on remittances, and precipitation data from Climate Hazards Center’s Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS, based on satellite and weather stations) – to provide a qualitative example of the relationship between drought and remittances at the county level in Burkina Faso. In this project, we move on to a quantitative test of the hypotheses we developed on the relationships between climate variability and remittances using statistical models and best practices from the Earth science and social-science literatures. We incorporate data from six countries on remittances and, improving on the example in our One Earth paper, more holistic data on droughts – including evapotranspiration data and changes in vegetation cover.

Faculty supervisor: James Holland Jones, School of Sustainability - Social Science Division
Focus country(ies): Kenya
Research fellow: Kathryn Alexander, '26, Human Biology

New Models of Vocational Education in Brazil

Brazil passed a law in 2024 allowing states to add vocational offerings in academic schools. Each state is now implementing new models of vocational education. Some of the models are quite innovative and introduce industry-school partnerships. The research aims to document the different models that exist. To the extent that it is possible to get data from the schools or educational departments, we hope to examine the impacts of these schools. Additionally, we hope to identify other ways to make meaningful comparisons on how to form new partnerships, ways to simplify establishing vocational education programs, and the impacts of such programs.

Faculty supervisor: Eric Bettinger, Graduate School of Education - Social Sciences, Humanities and Interdisciplinary Policy Studies in Education (SHIPS)
Focus country(ies): Brazil
Research fellow: Avery Miller, '26, International Relations

Secondary analysis of global data on the association of clinical signs of illness with mortality of young infants

Community health workers (CHWs) play a critical role in low- and middle-income countries in identifying and managing sick young infants. The World Health Organization (WHO) has developed clinical algorithms - known as Integrated Management of Childhood Illness - to guide CHW clinical assessments and management. We are collaborating with WHO and have assembled global data from several studies across multiple countries in Asia and Africa on the risks for mortality associated with various clinical signs identified in young infants under 2 months of age. We have conducted initial machine learning analysis and over summer of 2025, we will advance case fatality, time varying Cox regression and machine learning analyses. Results will be used to inform modifications of WHO global recommendations for the identification and management of sick young infants. This is the first study to assemble global data on clinical signs and their association with mortality of young infants, and to apply advanced analytical approaches to gain further insights into how to most effectively recognize and management sick young infants in low- and middle-income countries. A 2024 Summer Full-Time Undergraduate Research Fellow spent the summer at WHO, Geneva, and has played an instrumental role in assembling the data and advancing the machine learning analysis for this project. We are looking for a highly motivated student with some experience in analyzing data to pick up this exciting and impactful project.

Faculty supervisor: Gary Darmstadt, School of Medicine - Pediatrics Department
Focus country(ies): India, Kenya
Research fellow: Jerry Wang, '28, Computer Science and Mathematics

Spatial Prioritization for Forest Restoration in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

This project focuses on restoring watersheds near two of the largest cities in the southern hemisphere, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Collaborating with SOS Mata Atlântica, a leading Brazilian NGO in ecological restoration, we aim to identify areas where restoration efforts can enhance ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration and water quality while benefiting vulnerable communities and ensuring the long-term persistence of restored forests. Participants willhelp develop spatial prioritization approaches that integrate ecological, social, and economic factors. Using methods such as GIS, InVEST modeling, optimization modeling, and literature review, you will analyze potential restoration scenarios to assess their impacts on carbon sequestration, water resources, biodiversity, equity in access to benefits, and restoration success. This research offers a unique opportunity to contribute to applied conservation science, collaborate with an impactful NGO, advance  skills in quantitative and spatial analysis, and gain experience with PhD-level research.

Faculty supervisor: Gretchen Daily, School of Humanities & Sciences - Biophysics Department
Focus country(ies): Brazil
Research fellow: Wambua Kithusi Musyoki, '26, Biology

Sustainable Development in Education Policies Worldwide

This research is aimed to explore global variations in sustainable development education. Students will contribute to the Database's construction and leverage the information in over 14,000 education policies from more than 250 countries and territories to analyze how different countries incorporate principles of sustainability into their educational systems, from early childhood programs to higher education curricula. Researchers will investigate the integration of topics such as climate change, renewable energy, gender and social equity, and economic resilience into national education frameworks. 

Faculty supervisor: Patricia Bromley, School of Sustainability - Social Science Division
Focus country(ies): No country/regional focus
Research fellow: Shayla Fitzsimmons-Call, '26, International Relations