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Leadership Training in Public Health
No full textThis thesis investigates the current landscape of public health leadership training at schools and programs of public health by assessing (1) the availability of leadership programs, (2) volume and demographic patterns in student applications, and (3) interviews with faculty and staff at public health leadership programs. This project was conducted in partnership with the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health, leveraging data from the Academic Program Finder and the SOPHAS application system. This project was undertaken to address the growing need for skilled public health leaders who can navigate complex challenges—from emerging infectious diseases to evolving policy landscapes—while fostering innovation and collaboration in the field of public health
Key findings reveal that although only a small fraction of public health programs explicitly focus on leadership, these programs exhibit unique characteristics compared to non-leadership offerings. Leadership programs tend to have lower acceptance rates, higher proportions of doctoral and non-degree options, and are more frequently delivered online or in hybrid formats, thereby broadening geographic accessibility and accommodating working professionals. Analysis of applicant data also highlights opportunities to enhance access and inclusivity, as demographic variations point to areas where leadership training can expand its reach. Qualitative interviews underscored diverse and innovative approaches to curriculum design, candidate selection, and the integration of self-assessment tools and experiential learning—demonstrating promising practices for developing self-awareness and practical skills.
This work has revealed the need to expand the number of leadership programs to meet current levels of student demand and broaden accessibility, and has identified a number of current practices in candidate selection, design of practical training, self-assessment and leadership development planning – offering a roadmap for emerging public health leadership training programs.Public Healt
Essays on Human Capital and Development Economics
No full textThis dissertation contains three chapters that study the determinants of human capital in resource-constrained settings: middle managers’ role in workplace mental health, information interventions in college major selection, and how historical examination systems can shape allocation of talents.
In the first chapter, I study how middle managers can promote their subordinates’ mental wellbeing in the workplace. This paper examines key managerial determinants - expertise, attention, and beliefs - in helping subordinates manage emotional challenges. In a field experiment with 6,000 workers at a Chinese automobile manufacturer, I provide middle managers with mental health support training (enhancing expertise), and a subset also receive top management’s directive (manipulating attention). I find significant improvements in subordinate workers’ mental health and reduction in absenteeism only when managers received both training and directive. Using survey data and a lab-in-the-field experiment, I identify increased supervisor-subordinate interactions as the key mechanism driving these improvements. Analysis of manager behavior reveals that successful adoption of new practices depends critically on mitigating adaptation costs, whether through external directives or internal reallocation of attention. In a follow-up survey experiment, presenting these results to a separate group of managers (altering beliefs) leads to an increased participation in mental health initiatives. Taken together, the results provide actionable recommendations for developing organizational policies to improve workplace well-being.
In the second chapter, which is joint work with Fei Yuan, we investigate the alignment between individual capabilities and educational choices. Choosing a career path aligned with personal interests and strengths profoundly impacts professional success. In early-specialization education systems, students are required to select a college major without sufficient knowledge to make informed choices. This challenge is particularly pronounced among the rural Chinese high school students in our sample, where females are significantly less likely than males to select majors that align with their personal strengths. In this paper, we use a randomized controlled trial to show that providing students with detailed information about the disciplinary characteristics of specific majors significantly reduces this gender gap. Our intervention leads to more informed choices only among female students, reducing their uncertainty, increasing perceived personal fit, and resulting in improved mental health and academic performance. Notably, these effects are strongest among females transitioning from science to humanities majors. Our findings have immediate policy relevance for the role of targeted information in addressing gender disparities in educational choice and enhancing student wellbeing.
The third chapter adopts a historical perspective on human capital allocation, investigating how institutional incentives shaped intellectual pursuits in imperial China. It examines the role of the Chinese civil service examination system (Keju) in discouraging Chinese literati from engaging with science and technology. This study leverages a natural experiment from 1713, when the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing dynasty removed all questions related to natural sciences from the civil service examination. Using variation in prefectural examination quotas, the analysis demonstrates that this curriculum reform significantly disincentivized scientific inquiry—prefectures with higher quotas per capita, where the expected returns to exam success were greater, experienced a sharper decline in published scientific works. These effects are even more pronounced when employing an instrumental variable approach to address potential omitted variable bias. The findings suggest that the exclusion of natural sciences from the curriculum distorted intellectual incentives, steering Chinese scholars away from scientific pursuits. This institutional constraint likely played a role in the Great Divergence, contributing to China's lag in scientific production relative to Western Europe.Public Polic
Staging Riis
No full textStaging Riis explores the evolution of “The People’s Beach,” a compact swath of shoreline at the end of Jacob Riis Park that queer New Yorkers have gone to since 1941. For nearly a century, this fragment of coast has been a public queer refuge, perpetually on the brink of erasure. This project stages Riis for the next century, as a site of coastal and cultural resilience.
The entwined calamities of swelling sea levels and rising persecution of queer people have, climatically and culturally, eroded the site. The existing and proposed gray infrastructures facilitate this erosion within a linear regulatory regime. Staging Riis, incrementally builds on the queer tradition of cultivating piecemeal spaces through acts of appropriation and deconstruction of existing systems. Through time, existing infrastructures serve as building blocks for hybridized systems that accept change as a means of resistance.Department of Landscape Architectur
Mechanisms of immunosuppression induced by Chlamydia trachomatis
No full textChlamydia trachomatis is an obligate intracellular bacterial pathogen that if left untreated, can cause reproductive harm. Failure of natural adaptive immunity to this pathogen results in chronic and repeat infections. In efforts to understand failure of adaptive immunity, we have previously discovered that CD8+ T cells, normally integral for controlling intracellular pathogen infections, are misprogrammed by PD-1/PD-L1 signaling during C. trachomatis infection and fail to mount a protective response. Here we sought to uncover the host pathways and bacterial factors involved in PD-L1 upregulation that may lead to CD8+ T cell inhibition.
We discovered that a secreted factor produced during C. trachomatis infection is sufficient to induce PD-L1 upregulation. Using both in vitro and in vivo infection models, we identified this factor as type I interferons (IFNs). Based on previous work showing that stimulator of interferon genes (STING) plays a critical role in driving type I IFN expression during C. trachomatis infection, we show that STING is required for type I IFN-driven PD-L1 upregulation during infection in vitro. Both dsDNA sensing by cyclic GMP-AMP synthase (cGAS) upstream of STING and direct sensing of bacterial cyclic dinucleotides by STING contribute to type I IFN-driven PD-L1 upregulation during C. trachomatis infection.
Finally, we explored the C. trachomatis factors involved in inducing type I IFN-driven PD-L1 upregulation. We show that PD-L1 expression is dependent on C. trachomatis development within host cells and its type III secretion system (T3SS) but independent of genes encoded on the C. trachomatis plasmid. Given that DacA is the diadenylate cyclase enzyme responsible for producing the cyclic dinucleotide c-di-AMP in Chlamydia, we hypothesize that this specific C. trachomatis factor contributes to STING activation and downstream type I IFN-driven PD-L1 upregulation. Taken together, our data supports a model in which T3SS activity during C. trachomatis infection delivers dsDNA and c-di-AMP produced by DacA into the host cytosol to activate STING and induce type I IFN-driven PD-L1 upregulation. These findings illuminate a mechanism by which C. trachomatis infection may impair CD8+ T cell mediated immunity.Biological and Biomedical Science
Aid That Pays Dividends: The Long-Term Impact of Gavi’s Vaccination Programs on Education and Health
No full textThis thesis investigates the broader developmental impacts of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, on educational outcomes, mortality rates and vaccination coverage. While vaccination is widely recognized as a highly cost-effective form of foreign aid, most evaluations focus on its immediate health effects. This study extends that evaluation by estimating Gavi’s impact not only on child mortality and vaccine coverage but also on educational attainment—a critical indicator of long-term development. Using a difference-in-differences strategy with country-fixed effects and a global time trend, I compare countries before and after they received Gavi funding to similar countries that never did. I rely on raw household-level data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) rather than administrative or modelled data to avoid bias and circular reasoning. Results show that Gavi funding significantly reduced under-five and infant mortality and increased primary school attendance by nearly 7%. While effects on vaccination coverage were less consistent, the findings point to strong mortality and morbidity effects, explaining the increase in education. By introducing education as an outcome variable, using a cleaner identification strategy, and leveraging over two decades of data, this thesis contributes new empirical evidence on how targeted health interventions can promote broader development goals.Applied Mathematic
Architecture as the Fourth Teacher
No full textThe image of a typical Ghanaian basic school is predictable: rows of age-segregated and unitized classrooms arrayed along a corridor, with interiors gridded by tables and chairs. This architectural type is actualized by a standardized educational curriculum, a historically colonial influenced, teacher-centric “talk and chalk” model. These schools prioritize efficiency and conformity to the exclusion of all other modes of learning, a condition perpetuated by its strict and monotonous architecture.
The introduction of a formalized education model in the country was reinforced through the imposition of conformity under colonialism. The first schools were established in colonial forts – lasting symbols of imperial control and oppression. Even post-colonial education is modeled after the British system, with buildings that follow the tenants of Tropical Modernism, further evidencing layers of conformity in curriculum, culture, and architecture. If this highly formalized and strict curriculum has produced a particular type of architecture and citizen, could a new type of curriculum and its attendant architecture counter this?
This thesis argues for a translation of non-standardized educational models and philosophies – Reggio-Emilia, Waldorf, Montessori, Emergent, etc. – into a new intrinsic architecture that better reflects its context, culture and native teaching methods. Set against the fishing community of James Town, this new typology challenges the standardized curriculum, which is homogenized and non-contextual, by introducing site-specific craftsmanship and vocation into the school complex. This pairing of a non-conformist curriculum with an equally transformative architecture constitutes a new type of school that fosters learning in all its spaces.Department of Architectur
PTH signaling in Ctsk+ cells is critical for skeletal homeostasis and tooth formation and eruption
No full textPTH signaling is of primordial clinical importance in the regulation of skeletal development and homeostasis, as well as in tooth formation and eruption. Both skeletal and dental mesenchymal cells express PTH1r and are target of PTH signaling. Our lab has been investigating the function of a recently identified periosteal stem cell (PSC) population labeled by Cathepsin K (Ctsk) in the regulation of cortical bone homeostasis. Ctsk+ lineage PSCs, which fulfil stemness criteria, express high levels of the PTH1r and respond to iPTH treatment. Ctsk is also expressed in dental pulp cells, dental follicle cells, and the periodontal ligament which are known to play a key role in tooth development and eruption. Whether PTH signaling in Ctsk+ lineage cells is required for proper periosteal bone formation and tooth development and eruption is not known. We, therefore, undertook a study to investigate whether PTH signaling in the Ctsk expressing PSCs and dental mesenchymal cells regulates these processes. To this end, we generated mice lacking PTH1r, specifically in Ctsk+ cells, using the CtskCre mice and analysed their cortical bone and teeth.
Eight-week-old CtskCre;PTH1rfl/fl (CtskPTH1r) male and female mice are significantly smaller than their control littermates (PTH1rfl/fl). microCT and bone histomorphometry analyses revealed a significant decrease in cortical bone volume (%), cortical thickness, and periosteal MAR in CtskPTH1r mice compared to PTH1rfl/fl littermates. Notably, CtskPTH1r male and female mice present with failure of molar eruption and impaired incisor eruption. microCT analyses and histological examination revealed several abnormalities in 8-week-old CtskPTH1r mice, including truncated molar roots, loss of the periodontal ligament, root ankylosis, reduced cementoblasts, and markedly decreased alveolar bone. Severe dental anomalies werealso seen in CtskPTH1rmice at P12 and P19. Confirming that both the skeletal and the tooth phenotype are a consequence of deletion of the PTH1r in the mesenchymal cell lineage, Lys2Cre mice, widely used to deleted genes of interest in osteoclasts, do not present with any skeletal and dental phenotype.
While our findings confirm the significance of PTH signaling in both periosteal bone formation and tooth development and eruption, they reveal for the first time a crucial role for Ctsk+ lineage cell- dependent PTH signaling within the periosteum and dental mesenchyme. The periosteum is a significant source of stem cells and progenitors contributing to bone growth and homeostasis, regeneration and response to anabolic drugs. Investigating the signaling molecules and pathways regulating periosteal stem cells offers an opportunity to advance our understanding of the mechanisms involved in these processes and may open novel and targeted therapeutic approaches for human diseases associated with bone fragility and impaired bone regeneration. Similarly, a comprehensive understanding of distinct subsets of dental mesenchymal cell populations and unravelling their regulation is of significance for the effective pursuit of novel dental regenerative strategies.Oral Biolog
The Promise and Hazards of Armed Self-Protection: Analyzing the Racial and Gender Implications of Justifiable Homicide and the Effects of ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws
No full textIn response to a growing national desire for armed self-protection, most states have passed Stand Your Ground (SYG) laws. These laws expand legal immunities for the use of self-defense and allow law enforcement personnel to preempt jury rulings of justifiable homicides. In this thesis, I empirically investigate the application of self-defense protections along racial and gender lines. I also examine the causal impact of SYG adoption on the classification of homicides as self-defensive. Using regression analyses of the CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System, I find strong evidence that racial and gender disparities lie in justifiability determinations. These determinations especially favor self-defense claims made by White men and women against Black male strangers, even in the absence of a preceding felony (e.g., robbery or sexual assault). Applying a difference-in-differences strategy, I find suggestive evidence that the passage of an SYG law increases the prospect that a homicide will be deemed justifiable, particularly in the absence of clear proof of self-defense. Taking together, the findings in this thesis indicate that the promise of self-protection is neither race-blind nor gender-neutral, and the expansion of legal self-defense protections may inadvertently broaden the authorized use of lethal violence.Applied Mathematic
Words Speak As Loudly As Actions: Deep Learning Methods For Stance-Based Ideal Points From Congressional Speeches
No full textThis thesis presents a framework for analyzing text data to extract ideological positions, with a particular application to estimating legislators’ ideal points from their speeches. Traditional vote-based methods such as DW-NOMINATE capture limited information from binary roll-call votes, while existing text-based methods rely solely on the lexical co-occurrence of words, leaving a gap in leveraging the rich semantic content of legislative discourse. To address this, we introduce the first theoretical formulation for stance-based ideal points and develop computational methods for their estimation directly from the Congressional Record using language models and contextual embeddings.
Our contributions include: (1) a comprehensive new dataset linking congressional speeches to the bills they discuss; (2) BARTExpan, a novel topic taxonomy generation method that discovers topics from speeches and organizes them in a hierarchical taxonomy of increasing specificity; (3) StrideStance, a state-of-the-art zero-shot stance detection model that identifies legislators’ stances on these topics; and (4) an integrated framework that combines all of these methodological developments to estimate new stance-based ideal points that reveal patterns not captured in voting data.
Applied to the 117th Congress (2021-2023), we validate our method against existing measures, and show that it captures fiscal and economic issues along the primary dimension as well as contemporary social flashpoints on issues such as abortion and civil rights along secondary dimensions. Furthermore, we use these ideal points to illustrate the strategic behavior of swing-district representatives who moderate their speeches while ultimately voting with the party line, as well as to examine the political positions of non-voting delegates.
Beyond Congress, our framework provides a broadly applicable methodology for estimating ideological positions across a diversity of textual domains, including judicial opinions and news media.Computer Scienc
Spherochromatism in representation theory and arithmetic geometry
No full textThe goal of this thesis is to explain some applications of the perspective of chromatic homotopy theory to geometric representation theory and to arithmetic geometry. In the first half of this thesis, we study how the derived geometric Satake equivalence (due to Bezrukavnikov-Finkelberg, building on work of Ginzburg and Mirkovic-Vilonen) changes when one considers the category of constructible equivariant sheaves of -modules on the affine Grassmannian of a complex (simply-laced) reductive group , where is a commutative ring \textit{spectrum}. We state a conjecture describing the ``spectral side'' in terms of the Langlands dual group \ld{G} and the -dimensional formal group associated to via chromatic homotopy theory, and we make progress towards proving this conjecture. We also explore consequences of our conjecture in relation to the relative Langlands program recently elucidated by Ben-Zvi--Sakellaridis--Venkatesh.
In the second half of this thesis, we describe some joint work with Arpon Raksit, in which we refine work of B\"okstedt-Madsen to provide a complete description of the topological Hochschild homology of the ring of -adic integers in terms of the classical image of J spectrum. This result has several applications, both to homotopy theory and to arithmetic geometry, which we outline. We also describe some joint work with Jeremy Hahn, Arpon Raksit, and Allen Yuan, which aims to extend the theory of prismatization recently developed by Bhatt-Lurie-Drinfeld to the setting of ring spectra. This is tightly related to the theory of equivariant formal groups, and we provide some explicit calculations of these objects by generalizing rudiments of -deformed calculus. The constructions we describe also have applications to classical arithmetic geometry; for example, we explain how our work can be used to provide a higher-dimensional refinement of Drinfeld's recent reinterpretation of Deligne-Illusie's work on Hodge theory in characteristic .Mathematic