I am a Ph.D. student in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I graduated from the National University of Singapore (NUS) with a Bachelor of Social Science degree in Economics and a certificate from the University Scholars Programme, a rigorous 4-year interdisciplinary program at NUS. My research interests include behavioral economics, experimental economics, and applied microeconomics (labor and health). Currently, I am working on a project that attempts to explain the gender wage gap using a search theoretic model.

Nicole Thompson González is a behavioral ecologist and evolutionary primatologist in the Department of Anthropology. Her work draws from evolutionary biology, animal behavior, sociology, and public health to examine the multiple links between sociality, health, and biological fitness in human and non-human primates. Her work on wild primates in East Africa provides models of the social and developmental drivers of health inequalities from the individual to the population level, by pairing long-term behavioral and ecological data with biomarkers of health status. Further, her work centers life history theory as a framework to evaluate the costs and benefits of social relationships and community dynamics throughout the life course. She currently manages the Biobehavioral Health Laboratory at UCSB, performing and overseeing several assay techniques. Her current research focuses on immune regulation as a powerful pathway by which individuals embody social experience.

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.