Lab Members

Amaar Alwani is a current undergraduate student at the University of Rochester double majoring in Computational Biology and Finance, a part of the Rochester Early Medical Scholars (REMS) program, and has a research focus in health economics and clinical outcome analysis based on social and health disparities.

Khadijah Bland is a second-year PhD student at University of Rochester in the Health Services Research and Policy program. Her research interests include maternal health, hospital utilization patterns, and health outcomes.

Mira Chaskes is currently an undergraduate at the University of Rochester studying Mathematics and Economics. Her research interests include information asymmetries and the impact of policy on healthcare outcomes.

Rishika Chikoti is an undergraduate at the University of Rochester studying Finance & Biology, and is a part of the Rochester Early Medical Scholars (REMS) program.

Daniel Guth is a postdoctoral associate at the University of Rochester Medical Center. He is a health economist whose research interests include applied microeconomics and environmental economics.

Lena Harris is a second-year PhD student at University of Rochester in Economics, with focus on applied microeconomics. Her research interests are environmental economics, gender, and political conflict.

Yiyang (Edward) Huang is a current undergraduate at the University of Rochester majoring in economics and applied mathematics. His research is primarily focused on environmental and development economics, with a particular emphasis on the impact of policies on socio-economic outcomes.

Junya Jian is currently an undergraduate student at the University of Rochester double majoring in Data Science and Business Information System.

Konstantin Kunze is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Rochester interested in labor, health, and public economics. Specifically, he studies policies that impact disadvantaged populations and racial inequalities. His current research analyzes the effects of access to social safety net programs, the opioid epidemic, and racial discrimination on various outcomes.

Isaac Li is currently an undergraduate at the University of Rochester studying Economics, Mathematics, and Computer Science. His research interests include applied microeconomics and the implementation of data analysis through computer science.

Yuchen Li is currently an undergraduate at the University of Rochester double majoring in Data Science and Financial Economics. Her research interests include applying data analysis techniques, such as machine learning, to economics and health related topics.

Yi Ren is an undergraduate at the University of Rochester studying Data Science and Business. Environmental economics and the use of data analysis are two of her main interests.

Sarjona Sritharan is currently an undergraduate student at the University of Rochester majoring in Epidemiology and Statistics. Her research interests include chronic and infectious diseases, and their relationships with health disparities and inequities.

Grace Sventek is a predoctoral research associate interested in applied microeconomics. She’s currently interested in studying health outcomes, public policy, and the opioid epidemic. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a B.S. in Economics, Math, & Statistics in May 2023.

Laurel Tay is an undergraduate student at the University of Rochester double majoring in Economics and Brain & Cognitive Science. Laurel’s main research interests include the effect of policies and interventions on health outcomes and exploring how socio-economic factors such as income, education, and employment affect health equity across different communities.

Jingyao Wang Wu is currently an undergraduate student at the University of Rochester double majoring in Data Science and Economics. Her interests include applying data science tools to health and economics research.

Catherine Xie is an undergraduate at the University of Rochester studying Statistics and Biochemistry. Her research interests include using statistical analysis to tackle public health topics, such as long-COVID and tobacco use.

Zhushan Xie is an undergraduate at the University of Rochester, pursuing a double degree in Data Science and Business Finance. She is interested in applying Data Science techniques to solving real-life problems. Her research interests are the environmental and economic impacts related to air quality.

External Lab Members

Richard W DiSalvo is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Dr. DiSalvo studies applied microeconomics with a focus on public policy. His current policy interests are in drinking water policy, oil and gas development, and K-12 education. As part of Dr. Hill's team, he is working on the environmental economics of domestic drilling and the link between drinking water contamination and health. He also supports the team by instructing undergraduate research assistants in data analysis. Dr. DiSalvo received his Ph.D in Economics from University of Rochester in 2019. Learn more about Richard's work.

Naima Farah is a Post-Doctoral Research Economist at Texas A&M University’s AgriLife Research Center and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz. Dr. Farah’s primary research fields are energy, natural resource, and environmental economics. She has published work on endangered species, open access renewable resource extraction, and on water quality control. Her current work focuses on externalities related to unconventional oil and gas production (hydraulic fracturing) and food-energy-water nexus. She has been working with Dr. Hill and her research team on the effects of power plants on local housing market in the age of decreased coal use and increased natural gas use by the power plants. Dr. Farah received her Ph.D in Economics from University of Calgary in 2017.

Max Harleman is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration at Georgia College and State University. His research focuses on the governance of energy and industrial infrastructure projects, and how they impact the well-being of nearby communities. His previous and ongoing projects have explored how abandoned oil and gas wells affect real estate investment, how natural gas tax revenues affect local public finances, and how the construction of high-voltage lines to expand renewable transmission affects neighboring property values. Dr. Harleman holds a PhD in Public and International Affairs and a Master of Public Administration from the University of Pittsburgh. He is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, serving as an institutional development volunteer in Grenada between 2013 and 2015.

Lala Ma is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics in the Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Ma’s primary research field is environmental economics with a focus on non-market valuation. Her work deals with estimating the values placed on improving environmental quality using a combination of reduced-form and structural methods. Specifically, she has worked on projects to recover the value of brownfield remediation, of flood risk changes, and, more recently in collaboration with Dr. Hill, of mitigating the health and environmental costs of shale gas development. Dr. Ma received her Ph.D. in Economics from Duke University in 2014.​

Ethan Sawyer is a Predoctoral Research Professional with Becker Friedman Institute at The University of Chicago working with Evan Rose. His interests are in labor, education, and crime economics.

Mary Willis is a PhD candidate in Environmental and Occupation Health in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences at Oregon State University. Mary earned her MPH in Epidemiology from the University of Rochester in 2016, where Dr. Hill supervised her thesis on shale gas development and pediatric asthma. Mary’s dissertation research examines the perinatal health impacts of in utero exposure to emissions from the energy sector (e.g. shale gas development, power plants, vehicle traffic) using spatial exposure assessment and causal inference methods. She was recently awarded an F31 National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to pursue this work. Learn more about Mary’s work.