Ph.D. Spotlight
Distinguished Teaching Assistants
The Distinguished Teaching Assistant Awards for 2024-25 were presented at our winter reception on December 1, 2025. The winners of a certificate, a limited-edition coffee mug, and a year's membership to the Econometric Society or the American Economic Association were Aaron Amburgey, Therese Bonomo, Kyra Carmichael, Yuejun Chen, Nina Fluegel, Hongchang Guo, Elizabeth Jaramillo-Rojas, Eleftheria Kelekidou, Jose Lara, Takaaki Sagawa, Pablo Sanchez, Charles Williamson, Zhen Xie, and Hellary Zhang.
These awards are given to the top third of our Teaching Assistants, based on student and faculty evaluations. These awards have been listed prominently on the vita of our students on the job market and act as a strong signal to potential employers of your teaching capabilities. This is especially true for students from countries where English is not the first language.
Susan Bies Research Prizes
Also awarded were the Susan Schmidt Bies Prizes for Doctoral Student Research on Economics and Public Policy. The awards are given to the best public policy papers presented as part of the Economics 501 seminar. The winners for 2025-26 were Netanel Ben-Porath and Pedro Bitencourt. The prizes were generously donated by alumna Susan Schmidt Bies ’72 Ph.D. Her professional career included serving on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
eisner graduate fellowship
The final award of the evening was the Robert Eisner Graduate Fellowship, given in memory of Department of Economics Professor Robert Eisner. This fellowship is awarded to a graduate student who has distinguished themselves in both teaching and research. Typically, but not necessarily, the fellowship is awarded to a student who will be entering their fourth year. This is the Department’s highest honor bestowed on a graduate student at this stage of their studies. The winners of the 2025-26 Eisner Research prize were Max Pienkny and Ramya Raghavan.
Ph.D. student Spotlight
Nicole Saito, a 4th year Ph.D. student in the Department of Economics, recently spoke with her undergraduate alma mater, Chapman University, about her experiences working with her advisor and newly-minted Nobel laureate, Professor Joel Mokyr.
Saito, who is researching the economic impacts of the Japanese American internment during World War II, explains, "[Prof. Joel Mokyr has] encouraged me to continue on with my work even when confronted with many roadblocks—and he also encourages me to think bigger, too. He’ll engage with my ideas, help me work out the conceptual flow of things, and then ask me how my hypotheses relate to global cases of discrimination to other minority groups, or how the evolution of American race relations compares to those of other countries."