Alumni News & Announcements

Alum: Don't Make the Pandemic Worse with Poor Data Analysis
May 6, 2020

The need for immediate answers in the face of severe public health and economic distress may create a temptation to relax statistical standards, write David Groves (cohort '01) and five fellow codirectors of RAND's Methods Centers. But urgency should not preclude expert analysis and honest assessments of uncertainty. Mistaken assumptions could lead to counterproductive actions.
Alum: Protecting the U.S. Supply on Heavy Lift Launch Vehicles
May 6, 2020

Bonnie Triezenberg (cohort '14) writes that her recent RAND report (with student Moon Kim, '18) on the global heavy lift launch market highlights the potential for a near term shortage of launch vehicles. An inability to launch U.S. defense and intelligence satellites in times of need could compromise national security.
Alum: IT Modernization Rolls on Amid the Coronavirus
May 1, 2020

Federal Drive interviewed Gordon Bitko (cohort '02), former FBI CIO, for a podcast about the strain that the pandemic has placed on the federal information technology infrastructure, which has highlighted the need for IT modernization.
Alum: The Government Can't Make You Happy
May 1, 2020

While arguing that "government is best at lowering the sources of unhappiness," Arthur Brooks (cohort '96) said in an interview that COVID-19 has created "an opportunity for personal spiritual transcendence and a laboratory for good ideas and public policy," in the near future.
Alum Jeremy Ghez Discusses His "Toolbox for Managers"
Apr 30, 2020

"If it wasn’t the pandemic, it would have been something else. Unless you accept the need for constant evolution and even reinvention, you’re unlikely to do well,” said Jeremy Ghez (cohort '06) in a Q&A with the website Poets&Quants about his recent book, Architects of Change: Designing Strategies for a Turbulent Business Environment. Ghez is a professor of economics and decision sciences at HEC Paris.
The Impact of the Air Force's Space Launch Acquisition Decisions
Apr 28, 2020

How could potential U.S. Air Force decisions in the near term affect domestic launch providers and the market in general? New launch market forecasts and vignettes illuminate potential strategies for U.S. firms.
Alum Comments on the High Rate of Latinos with COVID-19
Apr 27, 2020

"We know this happens. We've seen this before,” said Leo Morales (cohort '95) about the fact that Latino patients are testing positive for COVID-19 at twice the rate of white patients. Morales, co-director of the Latino Center for Health at the University of Washington School of Medicine, was interviewed by his local NPR station about why this might be the case.
Alum Proposes Next Steps on the Return to Normalcy
Apr 27, 2020

"It is natural to start thinking about what it might take to return to normalcy," writes Loren Yager (cohort '87). "Unfortunately, these decisions are vastly more complex than the stay at home orders because there is no 'one size fits all' strategy."
Alum Examines 7 Possible Outcomes of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Apr 22, 2020

If not two states, then what? Shira Efron (cohort '11), lead author of the Israel Policy Forum report “In Search of a Viable Option,” joined her coauthor to discuss seven potential outcomes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict evaluated in the study.
Alum Examines Impacts of Segregation on Obesity Risk Among Hispanic Americans
Apr 22, 2020

The relationship between segregation and health for Hispanics is not uniform within a metropolitan area, according to research by D. Phuong "Phoenix" Do (cohort '00). Immigrants and U.S.-born Hispanics living in segregated neighborhoods have different risks of obesity depending on poverty level.
Alum Reviews Inexpensive Options to Mitigate Pandemic Risk
Apr 21, 2020

A year before the COVID-19 pandemic began, David Manheim (cohort '12) examined interventions that could significantly reduce the impact of a large-scale pandemic by reducing transmission, reducing exposure, reducing impact for those infected, and increasing large scale resilience.
Alum Reports Findings of Early Tests: 4% of L.A. County Adults Have Antibody
Apr 21, 2020

An ongoing study led by Neeraj Sood (cohort '99) found that only 4 percent of the adult population of Los Angeles County has been infected with the novel coronavirus, "which means we are very early in the epidemic, and many more people in L.A. County could potentially be infected."
Alum Discusses Importance of Business Innovation in Pandemic Response
Apr 20, 2020

"We always have a full pipeline of projects that we're working on for innovation," said alum Jamie Gayton, (cohort '06) executive vice president of PenFed Credit Union, about his organization's response to COVID-19. "Innovation is the lifeblood of a credit union, it's what keeps us going into the future."
Alum: Elections and International Affairs in the Time of Coronavirus
Apr 17, 2020

In a roundtable discussion titled "Korea on the World Stage," Myong-Hyun Go (cohort '04), a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, explored a range of issues that Korea is facing, including COVID-19, the general election of 2020, and the ROK-U.S. alliance.
Alum Urges Congress to Include IT Modernization Funding in Future Rescue Bills
Apr 17, 2020

"The COVID-19 pandemic has created a significant strain on many of the federal, state, and local government resources across the United States that people depend on every day," said alum Gordon Bitko (cohort '02), senior vice president of policy, public sector at the Information Technology Industry Council. ITI was one of five tech trade groups that signed an open letter to Congress.
Alum Asks, Can Globalization Survive the Current Health Pandemic?
Apr 17, 2020

Jeremy Ghez (cohort '06) identifies four principles of globalization and says a reversal of any of them "would be a game-changer that would challenge some of the foundations of globalization as we know it today."
Alum Examines Restarting International Travel in Time of COVID-19
Apr 17, 2020

As many governments start to lift their domestic pandemic mitigation measures, greater attention will turn to restrictions on international travel. Jakub Hlavka (cohort '14) asks, How quickly should we want and expect those restrictions to be lifted?
Alum Offers Recommendations for Rapid Release and Reentry During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Apr 15, 2020

Alum Angela Hawken (cohort '98), program director at the Litmus program at the NYU Marron Institute, has conducted research on early release from prison since 2016. Since early March 2020, Litmus has been working with justice agencies nationwide to learn how jails, prisons, and community corrections are responding to COVID-19.
Alum Explores Transitions Into and Out of the WIC Program
Apr 15, 2020

In the journal Social Science Review, Alison Jacknowitz (cohort '99) finds that family participation in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children only during an infant's first year of life is generally consistent with economic need and may not be a cause for concern.
WSJ Quotes Alum on White-Collar Unemployment
Apr 14, 2020

Julia Pollak (cohort '12), a labor economist for ZipRecruiter, explains why few are safe from the second round of coronavirus layoffs: “Any company that had been planning to open a second location, that hired an architect, an office designer, and contractor—they’re not opening that location this year and those people now won’t have jobs."