Meetings
Any student who wishes to meet with me (whether at NYU or not) may block time using Calendly.
MA students may only block one office-hour slot.
PhD students may block up to two consecutive office-hour slots.
When a student is only meeting with me, and/or with another student, they should use my Calendly. Do not block time outside of such hours using my Google calendar. That way, I can better manage the amount of time that I spend meeting with students each week.
When a student is meeting with me and one or more other professors, they should use my Google calendar (through the NYU system) to block time outside of my office hours. That way, we can adjust to other professors' schedules without having to exchange emails.
Reference letters
Eligibility
Any student who does well on one of my courses may request a reference letter for graduate studies or employment via e-mail.
Materials
Students requesting a reference letter should provide me with:
A spreadsheet of all graduate programs/jobs for which the letter is sought
For graduate programs, please include the name of the university, the name of the school/department, the name of the program/degree, and the application deadline.
For jobs, please include the name of the organization, the name of the sub-division/department, the name of the position, and the application deadline.
The personal statements (if applying for graduate studies) or letters of interest (if applying to employment) to be submitted;
An up-to-date curriculum vitae; and
Instructions on how to submit the reference letter for each graduate program/job.
For graduate programs, students should submit all of the above after having the application systems email me their requests for letters.
Timeline
Students requesting a reference letter should submit such materials at least two weeks prior to the deadline. Requests that do not meet this deadline may not be honored, except for extraordinary circumstances.
Doctoral students
Sorana Acris | Doctoral student, International Education, New York University
Sorana Acris is a doctoral candidate in the International Education program. Her research focuses on the impacts of education in post-conflict, divided societies on educational inequalities, nation building, social cohesion, and identity development. Sorana is supporting Prof. Alejandro Ganimian on a randomized controlled trial evaluating the impact of a civic education program in public primary schools in Liberia.
Prior to joining NYU, Sorana worked with the Development Impact Evaluation (DIME) team at the World Bank and as a management consultant in the education sector. She holds an M.A. in International Economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a B.A. in Political Science from Duke University.
Berta Bartoli | Doctoral student, Psychology and Social Intervention, New York University
Berta is currently a doctoral student in the Psychology and Social Intervention program. She is also an IES-PIRT fellow. Her research focuses on how children’s environments affect their motivation for learning. Her work is most specifically concerned with how educational systems can be gamed by actors within the educational ecosystem (e.g., parents, teachers, and students), and how those system-gaming behaviors can affect student outcomes in the short- and long-term.
She is currently assisting Prof. Alejandro Ganimian on a randomized controlled trial investigating the impact of a text message intervention on absenteeism in Mendoza, Argentina. Within the large-scale project, she is supporting a qualitative study to better understand parents’ and students’ perspectives of absenteeism. Berta is also working on a project investigating the equity of pre-k centers’ assignments from the Pre-K for All lottery application system in New York City.
Prior to joining NYU, Berta worked as a research assistant at Sharon Wolf’s RIPPLE lab in the University of Pennsylvania on projects related to parental engagement practices and mental health in West Africa. She holds a master’s degree in Statistics, Measurement, and Assessment from the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, and a bachelor’s degree in Economics and International Affairs from Northeastern University, where she was a University Scholar. Berta is fluent in English, Spanish, and French.
Arja Dayal | Doctoral student, International Education, New York University
Arja Dayal is a doctoral student in the International Education program. She broadly focuses on evaluation of innovative educational policies and programs. She is primarily interested in child protection, accountability, and inclusive education in low-, and middle-income contexts (especially, Africa and South Asia). During her doctoral study, she plans to focus on supply-side and demand-side barriers that impact the short-term and long-term outcomes of children with disabilities and out-of-school children by using quantitative and mixed methods. Currently, she is supporting Prof. Alejandro Ganimian on an efficacy trial of phone-based early childhood education program in India, and Prof. Elisabeth King on a randomised evaluation of art-based approach to reduce partisan bias in the United States.
Prior to joining NYU, she worked on multiple experimental and quasi-exerimental evaluations in Liberia, Sierra-Leone, and Timor-Leste with Innovations for Poverty Action. She has also worked with Liberian Ministry of Education to draft the first National Learning Assessment Policy and Framework. As a Teach for India Fellow (2012-14), she embedded herself as a second and third-grade teacher in a low-income public school working on student outcomes and engaging with parents, school management, and the community on projects.
She holds a master’s in Public Administration in Development Practice from the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, and a bachelor’s (honors) in Economics from Hindu College, University of Delhi.
Sharnic Djaker | Doctoral student, Psychology and Social Intervention, New York University
Sharnic is currently a doctoral student in the Psychology and Social Intervention program. His research examines teacher and parent al perceptions of student ability, and their effects on student achievement, aspirations and motivations in low-income contexts. His current research portfolio includes studies on documenting teachers’ knowledge on student ability; and psychological effects of ability - grouping in classrooms. Additionally, he is also currently working on multiple field experiments with Profs. Alejandro Ganimian, Mauricio Romero, Abhijeet Singh, and Karthik Muralidharan to evaluate education programs in developing countries.
Prior to joining NYU, Sharnic was research associate as J-PAL South Asia where he coordinated a large-scale field experiment in Tamil Nadu, India to evaluate programs on improving school preparedness and nutrition levels of pre-school children. He has also consulted for the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) in the past. He holds a master’s degree in education and international development from University College London (UCL), and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Shiv Nadar University, India. Sharnic is fluent in English, Tamil and Hindi.
Trenel Francis-Porter | Doctoral student, Psychology and Social Intervention, New York University
Trenel is an advanced-year doctoral student in the Psychology and Social Intervention program. Her research interests include understanding how parental academic socialization practices influence adolescents' academic outcomes for low-income, racial-ethnic minority families. She has contributed to literature on immigrant families' access to health and human services, as well as literature on hook up behavior and emerging adults' relationship attitudes and expectations. Trenel is a Caribbean American woman, originally from Staten Island, NY. She holds a Bachelor's of Science with Honors degree in Human Development and minor in Education from Cornell University.
Saloni Gupta | Doctoral student, Economics and Education, Teachers College - Columbia University
Saloni is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is a field experimentalist focusing on the development of higher-order skills in adolescents and technology reforms in school education. Her current work includes a study with Telangana Social Welfare and Tribal Welfare Departments in India on how skills like innovation and collaboration can be developed and measured in disadvantaged youth. She uses a battery of measures of higher-order skills for measuring the impact of an innovation education program. Innovation education has recently become an education policy focus for the national and state governments in India so this study can provide evidence of the effectiveness of one such program.
She is also working with government school systems in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh to understand whether they can use phone-based assessments to address data reliability issues of learning outcomes of children. Recent evidence suggests that learning outcomes data is hugely inflated in the government systems because teachers and local administrators fear adverse consequences if they report low learning outcomes. Saloni found that phone-based assessments are reliable and valid in comparison to in-person assessments, and the next step in this study is to understand whether phone-based assessments can incentivize teachers to report reliable data.
Saloni earned her master's in international education policy analysis at Stanford University and a bachelor's in electrical engineering at Thapar University, India. She has been a program leader for a nationwide teachers' education program, a teacher of at-risk youth during her fellowship at Teach For India, and a software engineer at Fidelity Investments.
Samuel Hansen Freel | Doctoral student, Psychology and Social Intervention, New York University
Sam Freel is a Ph.D. student in the Psychology and Social Intervention program at NYU’s Department of Applied Psychology. His primary interests are collective action, collective memory and the intersection of the two. Sam holds a B.A. in political science from George Washington University and an M.A. in teaching from Johns Hopkins University.
Alongside Prof. Rezarta Bilali, Sam is currently working to develop several studies investigating the role of historical narratives in shaping individual participation in collective action (e.g. activism). These studies test hypotheses Sam developed in a first-authored theoretical paper now being prepared for submission. Before that, he collaborated with Profs. Bilali and Erin Godfrey on a longitudinal study of people's involvement in the "Resistance" movement.
In addition to his main areas of research, Sam has worked with Prof. Alejandro Ganimian on multiple projects in recent years. The first project used generalizability theory to test the reliability of a classroom quality measure developed for use in Argentine public schools. Currently, he is co-investigator on a randomized control trial investigating the impact of a school principal training program in Salta, Argentina.
Jessica Siegel | Doctoral student, Psychology and Social Intervention, New York University
Jessica Siegel is a doctoral student in the Psychology and Social Intervention Program at New York University. Her research interests include investigating the impacts of poverty on child development and how policies and systems can effectively and equitably serve children and families. Jessica is currently working with Profs. Elise Cappella and Pamela Morris on a research-practice partnership with the New York City Department of Education to support their expansion of universal pre-kindergarten, as well as to understand the experiences of pre-k teachers, school leaders, and caregivers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Under the mentorship of Profs. Alejandro Ganimian and Elise Cappella, Jessica is investigating whether school climate can ameliorate disparities in access to high-quality pre-kindergarten for Black and Latine children.
Prior to NYU, Jessica received her Bachelor of Science in Child Development and Cognitive Studies and her M.Ed. in Child Studies, with a specialization in Poverty and Intervention, from Vanderbilt University. After graduating, she worked at NYU School of Medicine on ParentCorps, a family-focused, school-based intervention that aims to strengthen family engagement and support parents and teachers to create high-quality learning environments.
Zezhen (Michael) Wu | Doctoral student, Psychology and Social Intervention, New York University
Michael is currently a doctoral student in the Psychology and Social Intervention program at New York University’s Applied Psychology Department. His main research questions are: How do adolescents develop strategies, norms, and mindsets to cope with stress and develop belongingness in low-resourced educational settings? How could theory-driven brief psychological interventions buffer learners against various situational and environmental threats, stigma, and discrimination? What are the implementation and contextual challenges of applying brief interventions in real-world educational settings?
To answer these questions, Michael works with Prof. J. Lawrence Aber and researchers at NYU Global TIES on the measurement of children’s development in conflict- and crisis-affected areas (such as Lebanon, Niger, and Sierra Leone) and how brief psychological interventions like Mindfulness and Brain Games help with their social-emotional development. Most recently, Michael is also working with Prof. Alejandro Ganimian on building an implementation framework for social-psychological Wise Interventions in schools.
Prior to NYU, Michael earned his master's degrees in Arts in Education from Harvard University and Evidence-based Social Intervention from the University of Oxford, and he holds a bachelor's degree in Psychology from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. Michael is also a cellist and beatboxer.
Former doctoral students
Andreas de Barros | Post-doctoral Associate, Department of Economics - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Maya Escueta | Post-doctoral Associate, Center for Child and Family Policy - Duke University
Amrita Mitchell-Krishnan | Post-doctoral Fellow, Children's Health of Orange County (CHOC) Children's Hospital
Former research managers
Tanay Balantrapu | Consultant, World Bank
Rashmi Bhat | Project Manager, J-PAL South Asia
Urmi Bhattacharya | Country Director, Fortify Health
Nicolás Buchbinder | Global Education Monitoring Report Fellow, UNESCO
Krishanu Chakraborty | Manager, ID Insight
María Cortelezzi | National Director of Educational Assessment, Ministry of Education, Culture, Science, and Technology of Argentina
Nandini Gupta | Research and Training Manager, J-PAL South Asia
Putul Gupta | Senior Research Manager, J-PAL South Asia
Former research associates
Aditi Bhomwick | Candidate in Master of Public Policy, Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs - Princeton University
Iti Bhargava | Candidate in Master of International and Development Economics, Yale University
Shobitha Cherian | Research Associate, J-PAL South Asia
Smit Gade | Data and Research Manager, Good Business Lab
Roshni Khincha | Consultant, World Bank
Rashmi Menon | Candidate in Master of Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government - Harvard University
Sivaranjani Sivamohan | Program Manager, Central Square Foundation
Anuja Venkatachalam | Data Journalist, DataLEADS
Former research consultants
Riddhima Mishra | Candidate in Master of Public Policy, Harris School of Public Policy - University of Chicago
Mustufa Patel | Research Consultant, J-PAL South Asia
Krishna Srinivasan | Pre-doctoral Fellow, Department of Economics - Harvard University