From left to right: Gavin Alcott, Bettina Hammer, Nati Mulat, Abigail Orbe, and Can Yesildere
The Blueprint Labs team includes Research Fellows who contribute to education, health care, and workforce research. In this spotlight, Amanda Schmidt speaks with five of Blueprint’s experienced fellows: Education fellows Bettina Hammer, Nati Mulat, and Abigail Orbe and Workforce fellows Gavin Alcott and Can Yesildere. Interested in working at Blueprint as a Fellow? View our open positions.
Tell me about your background. How did you end up working at Blueprint Labs?
Gavin Alcott: Prior to joining Blueprint, I studied mathematical economics and political science at University of Pennsylvania and worked as an economic consultant at Bates White in Washington, DC. I joined Blueprint because I hope to pursue a PhD in economics and felt gaining additional experience in academic economics research would benefit me along that path. While my previous position developed my skills in statistical coding, joining Blueprint has allowed me to tackle research questions at the cutting edge of labor economics.
Bettina Hammer: I joined Blueprint after getting a Master’s in Public Policy from the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. I’m excited about using tools from economics and statistics to answer pressing policy questions.
Nati Mulat: I graduated from Davidson College with degrees in Computer Science and Economics. My journey into research began after my junior summer experience, where I had the opportunity to engage in summer research with my undergraduate advisor while simultaneously working as a data engineering intern at a software company. This dual experience illuminated my passion for research, as I found it fulfilling.
Abigail Orbe: I joined Blueprint’s K-12 and Higher Education teams in June 2023 after graduating from Georgetown University, where I studied economics and government. During the pandemic, I worked at a research institute housed at my regional food bank, and this experience sparked my passion for bridging gaps between researchers, policymakers, and practitioners. Joining Blueprint has allowed me to continue to work on salient and policy-relevant research while also preparing for a PhD in economics.
Can Yesildere: My first exposure to economics research was during the gap year I took before my junior year of college. At the height of the pandemic, I worked a couple of jobs and realized I had no data literacy. I spent the rest of my college education trying to catch up on these skills and got convinced that I wanted to pursue economics research, but I didn’t have time to dive deep into different areas of cutting-edge research. I wanted to experience a full-time research assistant position before I applied to graduate school, and I was lucky enough to end up working at my first choice.
Describe one of the research projects you’re currently working on.
Alcott: One of my projects is studying the emergence of new work due to technological innovations. New occupations such as Uber drivers, software engineers, or pilates instructors emerge over time due to changing technology or new social preferences. This new project leverages data from the US Census to identify individuals in new work by using their “written-in,” self-reported occupations and industries. We hope to answer many questions, including: Does new work offer higher wages to otherwise similar workers, and do those benefits last throughout their careers? What are the educational and demographic attributes of individuals in new work? What is the geographic distribution of new work? Have any of these patterns changed in recent decades in comparison to earlier ones?
Hammer: One of my projects focuses on how families respond to information about school quality and whether sharing information on high-quality schools with open seats can improve outcomes. We’re collaborating with our school district partner to design an experiment that will launch in the fall.
Mulat: I am currently working on a project aimed at improving average school quality through the assessment of school closures. One of the frontiers in education research is how to enhance school quality via school choice. Numerous studies demonstrate that providing parents with more information can improve their decision-making, but these interventions often disrupt choice. This project examines how closures of underperforming schools may provide an alternative method to enhance school quality. Interestingly, school closures tend to have less impact on student choice and travel distances compared to other policies. We then focus on finding the most efficient ways to allocate students from closed schools to other open schools within the system.
Orbe: I work on our randomized evaluation of a college scholarship program in Nebraska. Our longitudinal study in partnership with the Susan T. Buffett Foundation has found that merit aid increases college retention and bachelor’s degree completion rates. We are currently working to estimate the effect of the scholarship on students’ labor market and credit outcomes over a decade after they entered college.
Yesildere: I work closely with my principal investigators (PIs) to understand how exposure to automating technologies can help or displace workers and how this process contributes to economic growth. We also utilize many novel techniques from natural language processing in our analyses. It feels exciting to experience first-hand how the technologies we seek to understand can impact our work.
What motivates you to be a part of this research?
Alcott: The labor market is a central institution in not only the economy, but society as a whole. Providing meaningful, gainful employment to people of all backgrounds, levels of privilege, and levels of opportunity is an incredibly important social goal. In recent decades, large changes such as automation and exposure to trade have contributed to increasing inequality and shrinking opportunities for workers in the middle of the income and skills distribution. As new technological change threatens to continue this trend and new demographic challenges emerge on the horizon, understanding these problems is even more critical.
Hammer: I’m motivated to contribute to this research because our insights can help school leaders and other education policymakers make the most informed decisions possible. I’m hopeful that more rigorous evidence can lead to better policies for everyone.
Mulat: I am driven by the desire to contribute to innovative and novel approaches for improving school quality. School closure is a highly political subject, often met with diverse and historically-influenced opinions. However, through my work on this project, I have the unique opportunity to delve deeply into the mechanics of school closures. This experience has allowed me to appreciate the sophistication and potential value of this approach in enhancing overall school effectiveness.
Orbe: Our partners in Nebraska’s public colleges and universities are deeply passionate about improving student outcomes, and meeting with them to discuss our research breathes new life into the project. I am driven by this research’s ability to shape the futures of students in Nebraska and beyond. Amid heated debates regarding student loan forgiveness and equitable access to higher education, it’s rewarding to contribute robust evidence to the conversation on college affordability.
Yesildere: I get to contribute to research that seeks to answer questions that nearly everyone is interested in. From lawyers to Uber drivers, everyone is curious about how AI will impact their work, and by consequence their livelihood. There is a real sense of working at the frontier of research.
What kind of work do you typically conduct for projects like the one you described?
Alcott: My work varies greatly from day-to-day and from project-to-project. I am entrusted by my PIs to pursue avenues of inquiry which I think will help further the core goals of the project. On any given day, I may be preparing a memo reviewing existing literature on a topic area of interest, using statistical coding languages to process large datasets, or ideating new econometric analyses to answer questions with data.
Hammer: My work involves handling data in Stata or R – cleaning it, merging files, and running statistical analyses. I take time to think through the best way to format and present results in my research meetings. For my charter school research projects, I also reach out to charter school leaders to gauge their interest in participating in new studies.
Mulat: I typically run and manage econometric and market design models using Stata and MATLAB, as well as testing hypotheses proposed by PIs. My role involves coding, executing, and monitoring models, troubleshooting as needed, and analyzing model outputs. Additionally, I clean, process, and merge multiple datasets when necessary. Besides these core responsibilities, I compile results into comprehensive reports and presentations, communicating findings to PIs in weekly meetings. Furthermore, I draft proposals for permission to use data from data providers.
Orbe: My central responsibility is to bring the PIs’ vision for the project’s analyses to life. This requires building relationships with data providers and external partners, managing extensive data pipelines, implementing econometric models to tackle the project’s research questions, and leading regular research meetings with faculty and MIT PhD students to discuss results.
Yesildere: I have the opportunity to get involved with all aspects of research, from mathematical modeling decisions to acquiring datasets to developing predictive algorithms. My tasks are unpredictable and that keeps me on my toes, but it also never feels monotone.
What activities do you take on at Blueprint Labs beyond research?
Alcott: I have had the opportunity to take classes at MIT, which has been wonderful for my personal academic development. The MIT Economics department also has many talented graduate students who frequently present their work. Attending these seminars and being immersed in the academic environment at MIT has been a wonderful side benefit of this job.
Hammer: I traveled to Madrid, Spain to present Blueprint’s Charter School Research Collaborative and to Richmond, VA to present on school quality measure redesign in partnership with a major U.S. school district. I also conducted an analysis of high school dropout rates from 1960–present in major U.S. school districts, which was featured in a recent Boston Globe article about court-ordered school desegregation and busing in Boston. And I started BlueSprint Laps, our run club!
Mulat: I have taken several classes and attended numerous conferences, all of which have enriched my academic experience. Being a predoctoral researcher at MIT offers unparalleled access to fascinating courses. For instance, I took a PhD course last spring, “Algorithms and Behavioral Science,” which explored the application of computer science tools to solve economic problems.
Orbe: I’ve had the opportunity to attend multiple conferences, including the International School Choice and Reform Conference, where I presented on Blueprint’s Charter School Research Collaborative, and the Susan T. Buffett Foundation’s annual research convening, where I met with stakeholders in Nebraska’s higher education system and shared findings on our merit aid evaluation.
Yesildere: I have been involved in the internal analysis of our hiring data. Since one of my research projects is also about fair-chance hiring practices, you could call this “fieldwork” of sorts. I am proud that we take hiring very seriously at Blueprint and happy to contribute to making it even more equitable and meritocratic.