Jimena Rico-Straffon is a Ph.D. student in Economics at UC Santa Barbara. She holds a Master of Public Policy from Duke University and a B.A. in Economics from Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). Her professional experience includes conducting research on inequality, deforestation, monetary policy, and environmental policy at Mexico's central bank, the World Wildlife Fund US, and Mexico's National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change. Her research interests include natural resource economics, development, gender and racial inequality, and intergenerational social mobility. Her current research focuses on forest policy, as well as on the role of skin color on teenagers’ aspirations and investments in education.

Grants, Awards and Distinctions:

Deacon Fellowship, UCSB Economics Department

UC MEXUS- CONACYT Doctoral Fellowship (2019-2024)

UC Berkeley and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Diversity Fellowship for participating in the Berkeley/Sloan Summer School in Energy and Environmental Economics, $1,000

CAF Development Bank of Latin America, Research Grant on Sustainable Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, co-PI, $6,000

Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Assistant, UCSB Economics (2023) 

Adam Burston is a Ph.D. student in the Sociology Dept. with an emphasis in Information, Technology, and Society. His work lies at the intersection of gender, race, and social movement studies. His dissertation research focuses on the strategies that conservative and right-wing activists employ to form multi-racial coalitions, mobilize in digital and physical spaces, and enact social change. He is also assisting Drs. Sarah Thébaud and Brenda Major on research that addresses the impact of normative gender stereotypes in America. Before Adam came to UCSB he was a research associate with Carnegie Mellon’s Dept. of Engineering and Public Policy and a volunteer crisis counselor with Pittsburgh Action Against Rape (PAAR).

I am a PhD student in the Department of Economics at UCSB and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. Before coming to Santa Barbara, I earned a B.A. in International Relations with a concentration in Economics from Wellesley College, and did research on labor, housing and education at Abt Associates. My current research interests include labor, social policy, and increasingly, economic history, along with applied econometrics. I am working on a  project concerning interracial interactions during the Jim Crow era of the American South.

I am a Ph.D. student in Economics at UC Santa Barbara. I graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder with a bachelor’s degree in Economics. My research interests are in labor economics, public economics, and health economics. I am currently researching policy changes that affect fertility.

Grants, Awards and Distinctions:
California Policy Lab. 2022. $6,500 Seed Grant.
Graduate Fellow Grant. 2022. $10,000. 

Charlotte is a third-year PhD student in the Department of Sociology at UCSB. She received her MA in Sociology in the spring of 2022, which examined the association between institutional characteristics and Campus SaVE Act compliance amongst U.S. institutions of higher education. She is also working on several other projects, including examining male predictors of sexual violence and the #MeToo Movement in the Middle East, and how parents navigated childcare responsibilities during COVID-19.

Charlotte uses both quantitative and qualitative methods and is interested in gender and sex, sexual violence, education, and organizations. 

Grants, Awards and Distinctions:
Research Seed Grant, Sociology Department, UCSB, 2022. $1,000.