Summary
I have had the privilege of working on multiple research teams during my time in college. I have conducted research in a variety of fields, including cognitive science, public health, international security, and sustainability. I took on these projects in part because of their variety; I love immersing myself in different fields and thereby broadening my perspective. However, certain common interests also guided my choices. Specifically, each of the research projects I worked on in college allowed me to learn more about human psychology or social behavior. In addition, each project had practical implications that could bring about direct, concrete improvements in others’ lives.
Cognition and Education Lab
During my first year of college, I spent two terms working as a research assistant in the Cognition and Education Lab. My primary research mentor and supervisor was Professor Sean Kang, and I received a grant from the Women in Science Project to pursue my work. Our lab was evaluating which study strategies might allow individuals to most effectively apply their knowledge to new situations. I supported this project by helping Professor Kang write his literature review; I examined over 200 journal articles and drafted a memo summarizing the conclusions of the most relevant articles. I also supervised the subjects of various experiments connected to this research project, monitoring their behavior to ensure that protocol was correctly followed.
This research project was particularly meaningful to me, because it helped me refine my skills in scientific writing and analyzing technical materials. At the end of my two terms with the Cognition and Education Lab, I represented my research team at Dartmouth’s Karen E. Wetterhahn’s Science Symposium, where I delivered a presentation on the team’s findings. Please see the poster which I designed for this symposium below:
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
During the summer after my first year at Dartmouth, I served as a full-time intern with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. I worked on the Maternal, Neonatal, and Child Health team under the supervision of Helen Olsen and Dr. Nicholas Kassebaum, and I received funding from the Dickey Center’s Global Health Initiative Internship Program to pursue my work. I contributed to preliminary research tied to IHME’s Global Burden of Disease report, which quantifies the health loss from hundreds of diseases, injuries, and risk factors. This report provides country-specific data on the harm caused by various maladies, allowing us to comprehend health disparities and the social mechanisms underlying them.
My primary responsibilities included reviewing 200+ journal articles on the prevalence of iron deficiency in developing nations, engaging in data extraction, and analyzing my data through the software tool DisMod-MR. This internship allowed me to gain experience with quantitative data analysis and cemented my interest in public health. While I am unable to share specific details about my work, due to confidentiality reasons, please see below the internship report that I completed to secure my funding:
Political Violence Lab
During my junior year of college, I spent two terms serving as a research assistant with the Political Violence Lab (PVL), which focuses on investigating international security issues. I was mentored and supervised by Professors Andrew Shaver and Dotan Haim, and I received funding through the Junior Research Scholars program to pursue my work. I contributed to a project focused on civilian informing during the Iraq War during my first term with PVL. During my second term, I was assigned to a project investigating the role of local elites in counterinsurgency efforts.
Throughout these terms, my responsibilities included data extraction, interviewing senior military officials, reviewing scholarly literature, and writing research memos to brief my mentors on my work. This experience helped me gain experience balancing multiple demanding projects, communicating with key stakeholders, and immersing myself in a subject with little prior knowledge. For more information about my work, please see the Political Violence Lab’s website. I was most involved in the projects entitled “Conflict Exposure and Civilian Attitudes,” “Civilian Wartime Informing and Insurgent Violence,” and “PAMANA.”
Thayer School of Engineering
During the winter of my junior year, I worked full-time as a research assistant to Professor Jeremy Faludi, whose work focuses on sustainable engineering. I provided support with multiple projects within this domain, and I received funding to pursue my work through a Leave Term Grant from Dartmouth’s Undergraduate Advising and Research program.
My first major project involved conducting a literature review of 150+ scholarly articles to determine which industries were driving climate change, pollution, and species extinction within the United States. I wrote a research memo summarizing my conclusions, which Professor Faludi will leverage in his work conducting workshops on sustainability issues. I also designed and implemented an experiment evaluating various methods of teaching undergraduate students about technical concepts related to sustainable design. I received training in design thinking to conduct this research and drafted a comprehensive report summarizing my conclusions, which will aid Professor Faludi in designing his upcoming textbook.
This research experience was particularly meaningful to me, because it allowed me to refine skills related to design thinking, gain experience running an experiment of my own, and conduct research with more autonomy and independence than I had ever been granted before. Due to confidentiality reasons, I can’t share specific details about my work. However, please see below the internship report that I completed at the end of the term: