
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. My research interests include racial/ethnic inequality, immigration, education, health disparities, urban geography, and quantitative methods. My individual and collaborative work examines explanations for why racial/ethnic and immigrant-origin groups are unequally distributed across contexts– including schools, neighborhoods, and immigrant destinations– and evaluates the consequences of this contextual inequality for disparities in outcomes in domains such as education, residential mobility, and health. I am particularly interested in understanding how the attributes of immigrant-receiving contexts, including states, communities, neighborhoods, and schools, influence the educational and health outcomes of children and adolescents of Mexican origin.
Grants, Awards and Distinctions:
UCSB Office of Research Early-Stage Seed Grants Award Facilitating the Integration of U.S. Climate and Human Population Data (PI) 2022. $9,976
UCSB Faculty Career Development Award U.S. Latinx Destinations, Education, and Health. 2021-2022. $5,000
NICHD R03 Award. Immigrant Destinations, Institutional Supports, and Health among Latino/a Children. (PI; co-Investigator is Dr. Robert Crosnoe) 2018-2021. $100,000
NSF (SES- Sociology) Award. Kin Location, Neighborhood Disadvantage, and Health and Well-Being across the Life Course. (co-PI with Drs. Amy Spring and Nicole Kravitz-Wirtz). 2020-2023. $450,000
NSF Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. Immigrant Destinations and Achievement and Participation in STEM among Mexican-Origin Students. (PI). 2018-2019. $138,000