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Economics for Social Good

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Christine Byrd for UC Irvine School of Social Sciences

Cassie Zhang was creating lessons for children in Kenya and rural China who lacked basic educational resources when she started reflecting on her background in economics. She wondered if she could make a bigger impact by helping people make better-informed economic decisions for their social welfare. 

The question brought Zhang back to her alma mater to pursue a doctorate in UC Irvine’s economics department — ranked among the nation’s top 20 public economics graduate programs in the U.S. Now in the fifth year of her doctoral program, Zhang has spent the better part of a decade as an Anteater, while her parents remain 6,000 miles away in China. The campus has become a second home, while her faculty mentors and the students she has guided, have become like family.

“We’re not here by ourselves. With UCI’s supportive environment, you have company. You always have supportive peers and mentors to keep going and help you find your way,” Zhang says. “And then, looking back on how far you’ve come, you are able to mentor others, continuing this great circle of support.” 

Education abroad

When Zhang came to UC Irvine as an undergraduate in 2013, she was interested in helping international students understand the rules and processes they needed to succeed.

“People then mainly thought international students faced language barriers and culture shock, but I think there’s way more to it,” Zhang says. “I wanted to ensure students had a voice, and that schools understood international students’ needs.”

 

Zhang’s empathy stemmed from her own difficult transition. Her parents sent her abroad for high school because they feared she could not get into a good college in China. But at her private international school in California, Zhang felt manipulated by administrators who required her to take additional tutoring – which cost her family more. On top of that, peers bullied her for befriending classmates outside of her own nationality. The experience made her more sensitive to peers who may be struggling in silence. 

At UC Irvine, she provided peer mentorship and guidance through the International Center, LGBT Resource Center, and School of Social Sciences Undergraduate Student Affairs Office. Zhang also developed strong connections with UC Irvine faculty in economics and international studies, which she double majored in.

“I love UCI and the economics department,” says Zhang. “They want you to pursue what you’re interested in, try different things, and they will support you in ways I don’t think you can get anywhere else.”

After graduating from the School of Social Sciences with the Order of Merit and Chancellor’s Award of Distinction in 2017, Zhang pursued a master’s in International Comparative Education from Stanford University. Zhang’s time in the master’s program coincided with the outbreak of COVID-19 in her hometown. The fear and helplessness she felt in the early months for her family in Wuhan, China, only became clear to her peers and professors later, when the pandemic reached their own community. This gap in how she experienced the outbreak further fueled her desire to support international students in their educational journeys.

For her thesis, she drew on her strengths in economics and math to develop a theorem that describes how mental health impacts international students’ academic performance. For example, she found some Chinese international students experience a combination of familial pressure and a fixed mindset that creates significant stress – enough to negatively impact academic performance.

Economics to address social challenges

Zhang started working in international education, joining the non-governmental organization Education Without Barriers, where she developed online curriculum for underserved students in Kenya and rural China. But that role quickly brought her full circle back to economics.

“I witnessed how financial constraints impact educational opportunities. Those experiences, especially during the pandemic, shifted my focus to economics,” Zhang says. “I wanted to understand how governments and companies affect consumer and social welfare, and use economic analysis to develop evidence-based policies that would enhance welfare and support those in need.”

Zhang did not need to look further than UC Irvine when choosing where to pursue graduate studies. She had built good relationships with several of UC Irvine’s economics faculty during her undergraduate years, and she knew that UC Irvine’s economics program ranks in the top 20 nationally with concentrations in monetary policy and central banking, public choice and transportation. Plus, she missed the campus. 

Early in the doctoral program, Zhang attended a lecture with the Institute of Transportation Studies and became interested in how consumers decide to switch to electric vehicles, and whether they put too much value on purchase price without factoring in longer-term savings on fuel and maintenance. She spent six months collecting data for the project – a much bigger undertaking than she first imagined — and wrote her second-year paper on the topic.

Now, she is collaborating with faculty at UC Irvine and UC Berkeley on a project to better understand how the shift to EVs will impact highway infrastructure, which is largely funded by gas taxes. She is also examining the 2024 merger of Alaskan and Hawaiian Airlines to understand how it impacted travelers in ways hidden outside of ticket prices — like legroom and checked bag fees.

“These projects both show how consumers often don’t have direct access to the information they need in order to make the best decisions,” Zhang explains.

Her research has already garnered accolades. Her analysis of the airline merger recently won the 2024-25 Ken Small Award from the economics department. She also received the 2025 Otto W. Shaler Scholarship for international students and the Long US-China Institute’s graduate research grant.

“Her work on electric vehicle policies and airline merger analysis demonstrates not only methodological rigor but also a deep understanding of how economic research can address pressing societal challenges like sustainable transportation and market competition,” says Jiawei Chen, associate professor of economics, and Zhang’s thesis advisor. “I expect Cassie to become a leading voice in applied economics, particularly in areas where rigorous empirical analysis meets critical policy questions. Her background in education and social services, paired with her expertise in economics, positions her to bridge the gap between academic research and practical policy solutions that improve people’s lives.”

A ‘scholar-citizen’

Zhang’s commitment to supporting students remains as strong as ever. In addition to mentoring undergraduates as a teaching assistant, Zhang was selected for the competitive Diverse Educational Community and Doctoral Experience (DECADE) program and served as the DECADE representative for the economics department. In that role, she and peers organize lectures and luncheons to foster a more inclusive, supportive environment among graduate students and with faculty.

“What truly sets Cassie apart is her commitment to lifting others up, through both her dedication to supporting and mentoring fellow students and her focus on research that serves the public good,” says Chen. “She exemplifies the kind of scholar-citizen we hope to cultivate: intellectually rigorous, socially engaged, and deeply committed to using her expertise to make a positive impact.”

As she enters her final year in the doctoral program, Zhang is looking to the future. She plans to go on the job market for an academic position – the path taken by about half of UC Irvine’s economics graduate students. Recently, she was selected as a Division of Teaching Excellence & Innovation Graduate Scholar, and will be working with Santa Ana College instructors, gaining insight into the educational needs at the community college level.

“People say, ‘I want to make the world a better place,’ and I think education is an important tool to do that,” says Zhang. “When you receive education, you change your life. And when you use your education to help others, you change the world around you.”

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From Data to Models

Jill Kato for UC Irvine School of Social Sciences

Growing up in the rural Philippines, Kathleen Medriano learned early on that opportunity wasn’t always nearby. It could lie across towns, between disciplines, and even across oceans. At eight, she moved with her family to a farm so her parents could focus on their business. At eleven, she left home with her siblings to pursue a better education in a town two hours away. For college, she moved to Metro Manila. Through it all, she developed the ability to adapt, to work independently, and to see education not as a given but as something to be pursued.

Now a cognitive sciences Ph.D. student at UC Irvine in her fourth year, she’s interested in how people make decisions and how cognitive processes can be better captured through data-driven modeling.

Shifting course

In college in the Philippines, Medriano majored in psychology with plans to enter medicine. She imagined she might one day become a neurologist or neurosurgeon. While the courses she took opened her eyes to new ways of thinking, she found herself wanting a more structured way of understanding the mind. So, after graduation, she enrolled in a graduate program in mathematics, where she found a new kind of precision and a way of thinking that would later shape her research.

“Mathematics insists on abstract thinking. It teaches you to find shared structures across problems. That changed how I approached research,” she says.

After earning the graduate diploma, she took a job as a data analyst at a multinational financial technology company. During the pandemic, when she was forced to work from home, the distance between her job and her intellectual interests became harder to ignore.

“I wanted to return to the kinds of questions that had always interested me, like how people make decisions and what cognitive processes guide them,” she says.

At the time, she didn’t know that research, and eventually a Ph.D., would be the next step. Searching online, she came across a profile of a student from her university who had earned a master’s degree abroad and realized that maybe that was something she could do too.

She reached out to the student, and through that connection discovered a broader network of Filipino graduate students and postdocs, many of whom were mentoring others back home. 

A meeting of minds

With support from that network, Medriano applied to programs worldwide. She focused on programs that would allow her to bring together her interests in the mind, mathematics, and data.

What set UC Irvine apart during the application process wasn’t just the strength of its cognitive sciences program. It was a 15-minute recruitment call that stretched into an hour and a half.

Medriano had originally applied to work with a different professor, but as part of the recruitment process was also scheduled to speak with cognitive sciences professor Joachim Vandekerckhove. What followed was less an interview than an idea-driven conversation.

“We were just brainstorming,” she says. “It turned into this open exchange of ideas. I realized pretty quickly that I could work with him.”

Vandekerckhove saw the same potential.

“Kath’s work sits at the intersection of cognitive science, statistics, and AI/ML,” he says, referring to artificial intelligence and machine learning. “This is an extremely fast-changing area of science and knowing that there are talented junior scholars tackling these subtle but important problems is both exciting and comforting.”

Early on, their conversations focused not only on technical fit, but on understanding where the field was heading.

“Outside of a research department it’s difficult to know what topics are interesting to the field now and in the near future. This is something we worked on together: to get a bird’s-eye view of the world of data-driven cognitive science.”

That shared way of thinking—analytical, interdisciplinary, forward-looking—has shaped their mentorship ever since.

Model discovery

Medriano is developing new approaches to cognitive modeling that challenge conventional assumptions.

“In research, it’s typical to choose a model and then fit it to your data. But that means your conclusions depend entirely on your chosen model—its structure and all the assumptions baked into it,” she says.

Medriano’s research inverts this procedure to discover plausible models that generated the data. Rather than beginning with a model, she starts with the data itself, using statistical techniques to let patterns and potential models emerge directly from it. She’s particularly interested in extending her methods to other areas in cognitive science where empirical findings often accumulate without a clear theoretical thread.

“A lot of findings get reported, but we don’t always know how they fit together. I think these methods can help bring more coherence,” she says about the applicability of her research.

In the coming years, she’s looking forward to collaborating across disciplines, especially with neuroscientists whose data may benefit from more flexible modeling frameworks.

“I hope to develop broader networks. The tools I’m working on are field-agnostic. They can apply to brain signals, behavior, even economic data. That kind of versatility excites me,” she says.

Making sense

Early in the program, Medriano also decided to pursue a master’s in statistics alongside her Ph.D., a path available to students with strong quantitative interests. Balancing both wasn’t easy. The dual program demands more coursework and technical depth than most students are asked to complete. But for Medriano, the combination has been foundational. And often, the most meaningful parts of her experience have come not from the research itself, but from the relationships it has made possible.

“There were two of us doing the stats masters. We struggled together. And shared struggles create deeper bonds,” she says.  

Her community now includes close friends in her cohort, a tight-knit lab group, a local badminton circle, and a small but supportive Filipino academic network, two members of which are UC Irvine faculty.

Looking ahead, she imagines a future in research. What matters most is that the work stays intellectually alive and grounded in curiosity.

“I want to understand how we think in a way that doesn’t skip steps. One way to check that is by focusing on the data and seeing what potential models might have generated it,” she says. “There’s something about that inversion procedure that makes sense.”

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More Than A Status

Jill Kato for UC Irvine School of Social Sciences

Jozef Robles never expected to be here at UC Irvine, or in a Ph.D. program in one of the top-ranked sociology departments in the country. He never expected to be preparing to interview for faculty jobs or traveling to conduct dissertation fieldwork funded by prestigious fellowships.

“Just being able to say that I even qualify for things like this is surreal,” he says. “My 18-year-old self would have never believed it.”

What stays with us

Robles’s dissertation, The Transformative Effects of U.S. Immigration Law Post Legal Status Regularization: A Comparative Analysis, explores what happens to undocumented immigrants after they gain legal status. His fieldwork took him from Southern California to Houston, where he conducted 76 interviews with formerly undocumented Mexican and South Korean immigrants who adjusted their status after 2016.

“People often assume that once you’re a resident or a citizen you have nothing to worry about,” he says. “But what we’re seeing now is that those protections are far from guaranteed.”

His research challenges assumptions about immigration and belonging. Gaining legal status doesn’t automatically erase fear or stigma. Many continue to behave in ways shaped by years of living in the shadows, such as pulling over to avoid police, even when there’s no longer a need. Robles’s research explores how those behaviors and emotions persist well after someone gains legal status.

“Jozef’s innovative dissertation centers around a phenomenon he calls the ‘remnants of illegality,’ the psychological and material implications of illegality that continue to shape immigrants’ life experiences long after they have adjusted their legal status,” says Irene Vega, associate professor of sociology and chair of Robles’s dissertation committee. “His dissertation is going to change the way we think about the lasting impacts of illegality.”

For many, legal status once eclipsed all other parts of their identity. Robles finds that after legalization, people begin to view themselves through a more racial lens. With the burden of illegality lifted, race becomes newly visible and salient.

That kind of perspective, one that bridges the personal and the structural, is what Robles brings to his own academic path, shaped as much by experience as by his research.

Disbelief to determination

For the early part of his life, Robles was undocumented. He was brought to the United States from Mexico at the age of two and grew up in Orange County believing he was just like everyone else.

“Then I suddenly realized I wasn’t – I wasn’t legally supposed to be here. It was a lot to take in.”

That realization unraveled Robles’ sense of identity. He had always been good at school, but now higher education felt like a dream that didn’t belong to him. He questioned the point of going to college if he couldn’t work legally afterward. His ambitions faded, and for a time, he dropped out.

But everything changed in 2013, when Robles received protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. It gave him permission to work and a foothold to imagine something more.

“I think that undocumented status absolutely just rocked so many things in my life,” he says. “It changed who I thought I was, and my ambitions in this country.”

DACA allowed him to return to school with a renewed sense of purpose. He earned two associate degrees with honors from Santiago Canyon College, followed by a sociology degree from Cal State Long Beach and a master’s from Cal State Fullerton. And he’s now in his fifth year as a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at UC Irvine, working on a dissertation that builds directly from his own story and those of many others.

Where he needed to be

UC Irvine was never supposed to be Robles’ destination.

“When I applied, I told myself, I’ll only go if I don’t get in anywhere else,” Robles says laughing at the irony. “I wanted to finally have that American college experience—go somewhere new, live in a dorm, be far from home. Irvine was just too close.”

After growing up undocumented, grad school was an opportunity to live somewhere else. And at first, he planned to. But something shifted. During his interview, he spoke with Vega and felt an immediate connection.

“There are just some people you click with,” he says about their first meeting.

Robles was also drawn to the department’s culture of mentoring and the resources available to students. As he attended virtual open houses during the pandemic, UC Irvine rose to the top of his list. Then his husband was accepted into a master’s program on campus and the decision was clear.

“I think sometimes life points you in the direction that you need to go, even if it’s not where you think you want to be,” Robles says. “Looking back, I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.”

That decision proved to be the right one. Robles quickly found his footing in the program and began building the kind of scholarship he once thought might be out of reach.

“Jozef is an absolute star—he is intellectually curious, creative, astute, and has impeccable work ethic,” says Vega. “He continues to grow in skill and confidence. I am very much looking forward to his very bright future in academia—we are lucky to have him.”

Perfect alignment

Robles credits much of his progress to mentorship. Vega helped him publish his first solo-authored article. Another faculty member, sociology associate professor Rocío Rosales, co-leads a project with him interviewing immigrants in detention centers through letter writing.

“There’s so much about academia that isn’t written down, things you don’t know how to ask,” he says. “Being part of groups like the qualitative research collective, getting feedback, and just having people invest in you—that’s made a huge difference.”

Robles is also grateful for the support he has outside of campus. His husband, who he calls his biggest support system, has walked a similar academic path.

“We’ve both had to put our education on hold at different points, and now we’re doing it together,” he says. “I don’t know if I could do this without him.”

After years of uncertainty, Robles now has permanent residency and completed his citizenship interview this summer. As he finishes his dissertation, he’s turning his attention toward faculty and postdoctoral applications—steps that mark not just a career transition, but a life redefined.

“I’ve been trying to understand who I am now, merging the different parts of my life,” he says. “Now that I’m a citizen, I’m exploring my identity outside of my previous legal status. For the first time, who I believe myself to be and how the country sees me are finally in alignment.”

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Where Global Meets Local

Christine Byrd for the UC Irvine School of Social Sciences

After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, UC Irvine graduate student Gvantsa Gasviani was surprised at how the conflict reshaped her home country of Georgia. On one visit, she noticed anti-Russian graffiti on nearly every street, amid a surge of Russian exiles moving in.

“I was really curious to learn about these people who uprooted their lives in Russia to avoid participating in the war in Ukraine, but came to a country that was hostile to them,” Gasviani says. “I felt it was very important and needs to be talked about – especially in the West.”

Now a sixth-year graduate student in global & international studies, Gasviani has published in three peer-reviewed journals about post-Soviet Georgia, and is writing her dissertation on emigres who fled Russia after it invaded Ukraine. Thanks to grants from the Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies and the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding, she has twice traveled to Georgia to interview immigrants about how their lives in Russia changed after the war started, and why they fled their homeland.

Gasviani’s background makes her ideally suited for this research. Born in Georgia on the coast of the Black Sea, she spent 18 months in Moscow as a child, where she learned to speak Russian in addition to her native Georgian. She studied international relations in Georgia before earning a master’s in global studies through an English-language program that spanned universities in Denmark and Germany as well as the University of California, Santa Barbara. It was there that she first read The Global Turn by Eve Darian-Smith, UC Irvine Distinguished Professor of global & international studies and department chair, and and Philip McCarty, global & international studies associate professor teaching. Gasviani knew intuitively that she wanted to use the book’s method.

“Given the transdisciplinary nature of the field, selecting appropriate research methods in global studies can be challenging. Finding a book that engaged with these very questions, and having the opportunity to work with its authors, made my decision to pursue the Ph.D. program in global studies at UCI both clear and compelling,” Gasviani explains. “Having come from a small country, I always understood that the global impacts us locally.”

Research pivot

Gasviani joined the inaugural cohort of graduate students in the UC Irvine Department of Global & International Studies in 2020. Since officially earning department status in 2017, global & international studies has expanded to 17 faculty and 28 graduate students pursuing interdisciplinary research projects exploring social, cultural, economic, political, legal and historical contexts in locations all around the world.

Many of Gasviani’s peers in the graduate program are also international students, and their diversity strengthens the group’s supportiveness.

“The greatest thing about our cohort is that all of our research is extremely different, so you don’t feel any pressure of competition,” she explains. “We’re all studying completely different things in different parts of the world, but we can still help each other because we’re using the same framework. Everyone is very supportive.”

“Additionally, I’ve benefited from the invaluable support of my dissertation chair, Long Bui, who played a major role in helping me publish my work,” she adds. “Through his detailed feedback and constant encouragement, he guided me and made it possible for me to publish in a peer-reviewed journal as early as my second year as a Ph.D. student.”

Initially, Gasviani was researching how different generations of Georgian women coped with the legacy of Soviet control. But when she went home the summer of 2022, she was struck by openly anti-Russian sentiment in the capital city Tbilisi, and wondered what had compelled so many Russians to flee their homes. She started interviewing the recent exiles and ultimately pivoted her dissertation research to focus on this emerging issue.

Gasviani’s advisor, Long Bui, professor of global & international studies, was instrumental in helping her decide to refocus her research on the unfolding events in Eastern Europe.

“Deploying multiple methodologies and crossing various fields, Gvantsa embodies the kind of interdisciplinary research that is done in global and international studies,” says Bui. “It speaks to our department’s focus on matters of social justice and issues related to the Global South.”

Through dozens of interviews with exiles, Gasviani notes two major themes. First she noticed a gender dynamic for Russians in exile. Whether they stayed in Russia and avoided being conscripted, or left the country to avoid a war they considered unjust, their actions were considered emasculating. The war has become a tool for more harsh “gender discipline,” strictly prescribing how men and women are supposed to behave in public. At the same time, the line between public and private behavior dissolved in Russia.

“There’s been an understanding since the late Soviet era, that you could act certain ways in private as long as in public you demonstrated loyalty to the Russian government,” said Gasviani. This included homosexuality, which is effectively outlawed. “Many of the people I interviewed were queer, and they had vibrant queer lifestyles in Moscow and St. Petersburg before the war — there was even rumored to be a gay bar right across from the Kremlin.”

But after the war escalated in 2022, that changed. People started reporting their neighbors, coworkers and even family members who expressed any lack of support for the war — or even used forbidden terms like “war” to describe the invasion of Ukraine.

Gasviani also studies media and propaganda from the region, and recently published a peer-reviewed paper in The Journal of International Global Studies about how masculinity was depicted through Western media’s coverage of the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, she argued, was celebrated in popular media as a strong man fighting to defend his country, while Putin’s masculinity was cast in a negative light. Regardless of whether it’s positive or negative masculinity, Gasviani says any propaganda that associates manliness with militarization is not going to help end the war.

Teaching & mentoring

One of Gasviani’s favorite parts of the graduate program is teaching UC Irvine’s diverse undergraduate population in courses like the introduction to global studies.

“I love big intro classes because we get to have discussion sections with students,” she says. “I like to use real-life examples, including from my own experience in post-Soviet spaces, to show how big concepts are relevant in everyday life. I think the students really like to learn about hidden parts of history — what they weren’t taught in high school.”

To strengthen her own teaching, Gasviani participated in the CSU Pre-Professor Program (PREPP), where she was paired with a mentor on the faculty at CSU Dominguez Hills and gave a lecture on the history of masculinity in the Soviet state. By bringing both academic expertise and personal experience to her subject, she aims to break through stereotypical depictions of former Soviet countries like Georgia.

Gasviani, who has benefitted from the mentorship of Bui and other faculty, has also focused on mentoring others. Through Next Gen Pathways, she gets paired with incoming graduate students and answers questions about how to navigate graduate student life at UC Irvine, whether it’s about teaching undergraduates or how to effectively communicate with your faculty.

After earning her Ph.D., Gasviani hopes to continue both her research and teaching in the U.S., a path that her advisor sees as a promising one.

“Gvantsa will have future impact as a professor who truly cares for students, especially those who are international and from countries that are often not studied enough, like her native Georgia,” says Bui. “Her teaching is one focused on student experiences outside the classroom as the impetus for one’s higher education.”

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Sohyeon Park Receives 2025 Google PhD Fellowship

Tonya Becerra – UC Irvine ICS

Sohyeon Park, PhD student in informatics at the UC Irvine Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS), received the 2025 Google PhD Fellowship on Oct. 23, 2025. Her research focuses on human-computer interaction, responsible AI, and accessibility.

The program provides vital direct financial support for each Fellow’s PhD pursuits and connects them with a dedicated Google Research Mentor.

In announcing the 2025 fellowship recipients, a Google representative said:
“These fellowships recognize outstanding graduate students who are conducting exceptional and innovative research in computer science and related fields, specifically focusing on candidates who seek to influence the future of technology. We are excited to welcome this global cohort and look forward to partnering with them as they continue to become leaders in their respective areas.”

Park shared her insights on receiving the Global Google PhD Fellowship:

What does receiving the Google PhD Fellowship mean for you?
Receiving the Google PhD Fellowship feels deeply validating. It makes me feel recognized for the kind of interdisciplinary research I do – work that bridges the social and technical dimensions of AI. I’ve often worried that my research might fall in between fields: too technical for social science audiences, yet too grounded in human and social concerns for purely technical communities. This fellowship affirms that there is real value and space for research like mine. I’m excited for the opportunity to learn from and contribute to a broader community of researchers who share similar values and curiosity, while continuing to push my research forward.

Could you describe your research interests?
My research lies at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Accessibility, and Responsible AI. I’m particularly interested in how large language models (LLMs) understand and discuss people with disabilities, and what that reveals about broader biases in advanced AI design. Ultimately, I aim to use my work to challenge potentially harmful narratives and help shape more inclusive and equitable digital experiences.

What is the impact of your research? 
My research examines how LLMs represent and potentially impact autistic people, revealing how these systems can both reinforce and reshape social narratives about disability. As LLMs increasingly shape everyday experiences, from communication to education and work, they carry the potential to either further marginalize or empower users through the biases they reflect. My research identifies how AI systems can better align with people’s diverse communication preferences, cognitive styles, and lived experiences. The insights gained from this work can inform inclusive design frameworks that extend beyond the autistic community, ultimately benefiting all users by supporting technologies that adapt to each individual’s different needs.

Anything else you would like to add? 
I’m deeply grateful for the community I’ve found in my lab and in Informatics at UC Irvine. My lab mates and my advisor, Gillian Hayes, have been constant sources of support. Their support and encouragement have played a huge role in shaping both my research and who I am as a scholar. I feel very fortunate to be surrounded by people who are not only intellectually inspiring but also genuinely kind and generous with their time and insight.

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The Mysteries of the Mind

Allison headshot

Jill Kato – UC Irvine School of Social Sciences

When Allison Morehouse was in middle school, she visited UC Irvine for a community event hosted by UC Irvine Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders (UCI MIND). It was the kind of outreach effort meant to connect community members with the university’s research. But for Morehouse, one moment stood out: the chance to hold a human brain in her hands.

“I must have been the only kid there,” she says. “I got to hold the brain in my hands, and I remember thinking, this is so cool. This is what it actually looks like.”

Even in elementary school, Morehouse was already poring over neuroanatomy books from her local library. Later, when she had access to a computer, she found brain surgery videos on YouTube and watched them just to understand what was really happening inside our heads.

“I just tried to learn everything I could about the brain,” she says. “I would read pop psychology books, watch videos, whatever I could find.”

Today, as a Ph.D. student in cognitive sciences at UC Irvine, what Morehouse finds most remarkable about the brain is the paradox: it’s at once universal and deeply personal. It’s biologically similar across species, yet capable of uniquely human things.

“Our brain is similar to other animal brains. But we’re this unique organism that’s built societies, made art, and created technology,” she says.

It’s this curiosity about what makes us human and how the brain supports our thoughts, memories, and emotions that drives her research.

A path built on questions

As an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, Morehouse initially majored in molecular cell biology with a concentration in neurobiology. But as she progressed through coursework, she found herself asking broader questions that her molecular-focused classes couldn’t answer.

“I realized I was thinking more at the systems level,” she says. “I needed to know how neurons work, but I was more interested in the behavioral outputs.”

After a conversation with a friend, she switched to cognitive science, which integrates neuroscience with philosophy, computer science, psychology, and anthropology.

“It was the perfect mix,” she says. “All these different lenses to study the same overarching question: how we think.”

At the same time, Morehouse was gaining hands-on research experience in the Center for Human Sleep Science at UC Berkeley.

“That was the turning point,” she says. “I realized I didn’t want to go to medical school. What excited me was research, the creativity, the freedom to ask and answer your own questions.”

Muscle memory

Morehouse came to UC Irvine to continue her sleep research and explore how memory is formed over time.

“UCI was such a great fit,” she says. “It has this unique strength in sleep research. Most universities don’t have any sleep labs. UCI has multiple.”

Morehouse works in the Sleep and Cognition Lab led by cognitive sciences professor Sara Mednick, where her research focuses on how sleep supports emotional memory, spatial navigation, and cognitive health. One major project investigates how women’s memory and sleep change across the menstrual cycle, a topic rarely centered in neuroscience studies.

“We’re seeing that hormone changes affect sleep, and that those sleep changes are what impact emotional memory,” she says.

In another study, Morehouse uses ambulatory virtual reality to examine spatial navigation. Participants walk around a mapped environment, then either take a nap or remain awake, and are later tested on what they remember.

Mednick says she’s excited by the boldness of the questions Morehouse is asking, especially in how she designs real-world experiments to explore the brain’s complexity.

“Allison is interested in understanding sleep’s role in offline cognitive processing, specifically in complex cognitive processing,” Mednick says. “Her reasoning is that life experiences are complex and synergistically engage many cognitive domains…She has in effect created a real world, yet measurable, experience and now she can explore how sleep shapes this process.”

Morehouse’s study is designed to bridge that gap between the lab and lived experience, offering a more realistic way to examine how the brain integrates different cognitive processes during sleep.

“Most studies have people sitting at a computer,” Morehouse explains. “But real-world navigation is different. There’s a kind of muscle memory involved.”

Shared success

Morehouse credits much of her early success to the support systems around her.

“I’ve always felt comfortable going to the more senior students in the cognitive sciences department,” she says. “Everyone is so supportive. They offer to read your application materials or give you what they submitted when they applied for an award. People are really rooting for each other.”

She and other graduate students hold daily writing sessions, either in person or over Zoom, to help one another stay motivated.

“It’s a space where we can just work alongside each other and offer feedback. It makes a big difference,” she says.

Her lab is equally collaborative.

“Dr. Mednick has created this really supportive and open environment,” she says. “She challenges and believes in us. She makes sure we’re applying for opportunities and putting ourselves out there.”

Mednick echoes that praise. She says Morehouse has grown into a confident scientist with a rare combination of creativity, technical skill, and warmth.

“Allison is a natural scientist, with an excellent mixture of technical/computational ability matched with a long-standing drive to understand the human mind,” she says. “She’s also a natural leader (lab members call her The Boss) and a socially responsible person. She is the rare combination of an intellectually brilliant mind and a ridiculously fun personality. I feel very lucky to know and mentor her.”

Recognition and the road ahead

That support has helped Morehouse earn several honors. At the end of her first year, she received a fellowship from Edwards Lifesciences, which funded two quarters of research and allowed her to focus fully on a project exploring how heart rate during sleep supports emotional memory. That study became her first first-author publication, released earlier this year.

“I’d been working on that since my first week of grad school,” she says. “My family even threw a little party when it came out.”

She also received the Sleep Research Society’s Trainee Merit Award and a travel award from UC Irvine’s Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, which allowed her to present her menstrual cycle research at national conferences.

Looking ahead, Morehouse hopes to stay in academia, complete a postdoc, and one day run her own lab. She’s especially interested in continuing to explore more naturalistic, ecologically valid ways of studying the brain—through wearables, virtual reality, and multimodal research that treats people as full biological systems, not just collections of neurons.

“We can’t just study people as brains,” she says. “People are complex, and that complexity is what makes the work exciting.”

But at its core, her research is still fueled by the questions that first captivated her as a child: How does the brain work? What makes us who we are? Why does sleep shape the way we think, feel, and remember?

It’s the mystery, not just the answers, that keeps her going.

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The Electability Gap

Pharrell Allen headshot

Jill Kato – UC Irvine School of Social Sciences

In American politics, perception often matters more than preference. That tension—between who voters say they support and who they believe can actually win—sits at the center of Pharrell Allen’s research. Now beginning his second year as a political science Ph.D. student at UC Irvine, Allen is already producing scholarship that challenges some of the field’s assumptions about race, public opinion, and representation. 

Learning in transit

The urgency and clarity that now define Allen’s research were just as evident in his undergraduate years. Before arriving at UC Irvine, Allen had already compressed a full undergraduate experience into just two years, graduating at 19. While that achievement alone is remarkable, what makes it even more telling is how he did it. He commuted three hours each way by train to Montclair State University in New Jersey, while managing a full course load, working part-time, and working two separate research positions.

“I really wanted to graduate college debt-free, and a big part of that was not being there for a long time,” he says on his decision to condense his undergraduate timeline.

Completing his degree in two years wasn’t just about efficiency; it was a way to start doing the research he was eager to pursue.

Even before entering UC Irvine’s political science Ph.D. program, Allen had a clear agenda. His undergraduate university didn’t have faculty working on racial politics, so he looked elsewhere. He worked for the Racial Equity Initiative think tank where he explored racial disparities in New Jersey’s education system. At the same time, he served as a research assistant for political scientist Najja Baptist at the University of Arkansas, coding social media posts, transcribing interviews, and studying Black political activism and digital discourse.

“That’s really what pushed me to explore outside of Montclair State,” he says. “I wanted to find people more aligned with my interests.”

More than a match

Allen began identifying Ph.D. programs that could support his interests in race, gender, public opinion, and elections. UC Irvine stood out immediately.

“When I was applying, UCI had five people studying racial politics in the department, which is extremely high,” he says. “Now we have six.”

In a field where only about 4% of faculty are Black, the racial diversity of UC Irvine’s political science department also mattered to Allen.

“We have five Black professors in our department right now. You just don’t see that kind of representation at most other universities,” he says.

After completing a year, Allen says the university has delivered on every expectation.

“It’s honestly been amazing,” he says. “The program has been everything I hoped for.”

His scholarship has deepened with faculty support across the department. Political science professor Michael Tesler supervised an independent study during spring quarter, giving Allen the chance to dive into readings that helped shape his interests.

“Pharrell Allen is one of the most promising Ph.D. students that I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with,” Tesler says. “He is a smart, dedicated, and skilled researcher, who after just one year in graduate school, is already producing publishable papers poised to make important contributions to the political science literature on race, gender and political representation. I have the highest hopes for his academic career going forward.”

That kind of investment from faculty hasn’t gone unnoticed by Allen.

“There are so many people who have been so helpful in this department, even when they really didn’t need to be,” he says. “It’s clear they care about your development.”

That mentorship extends beyond the formal classroom. Political science professor Danielle Thomsen, for example, regularly sends Allen newly published research in his area of interest the day it comes out. She also played a key role in helping him shape the central questions behind his electability project. Jordie Davies, assistant professor of political science, made a point to reach out to Allen early on—offering both a warm welcome and opportunities to help him acclimate to graduate school. This kind of support wasn’t unique. Associate professor of political science Davin Phoenix reviewed his drafts even while on sabbatical.

“You’re not going to find support like this at every school. And you’re definitely not going to get five, six, seven, eight professors doing this for you,” Allen says.

When perception outweighs preference

Allen’s research looks at the disconnect between what voters say and what they do, particularly when it comes to Black candidates running for statewide office.

“Recent political science research shows that white Americans, especially white Democrats, express more favorable attitudes toward Black candidates,” he explains. “In surveys, they often say they prefer them.”

But in actual elections, those preferences often don’t translate into votes. Allen’s scholarship points to perceived electability as a key reason.

“Voters assume others won’t support a Black candidate,” he says. “So in primaries, they strategically deselect these candidates.”

Allen’s passion for research is evident in the effort behind the data alone. He hand-built a dataset of more than 4,000 candidates to track electoral outcomes and demographic patterns. He’s now preparing to submit the paper for publication this fall and recently won a grant from UC Irvine’s Black Thriving Initiative to support a survey experiment that will help demonstrate how voters make decisions and why.

Where the research leads

Allen’s early accomplishments have already attracted recognition. He’s a recipient of both the Cota Robles Fellowship and the American Political Science Association Diversity Fellowship.

“It’s not like fellowships fall out of trees,” he says. “So I want to be working as hard as I can to produce good work.”

As he moves into his second year, Allen is already thinking ahead to his next project—one that explores how perceptions of community loyalty may create additional hurdles for Black women candidates, who remain significantly underrepresented in American politics.

Like all of his work, this next project reflects more than academic ambition. Behind each new line of inquiry is a deeper motivation: Allen truly enjoys the process. His academic drive is matched by his love for the work itself.

“Research is something that I love to do. It makes me really happy,” he says. “It’s not something I find tedious or draining.”

Allen may study how perception can obscure intention, but his own path could not be more steady or clear.

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A Life in Learning

Kristin smiling

Jill Kato – UC Irvine School of Social Sciences

When Kristen Kennefick’s father observed how much she loved learning, he noted that she would probably love being a student forever. Now that she’s about to begin her second year of a seven-year anthropology Ph.D. program, Kennefick laughs at how close that sentiment hits to home. But she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I love learning so much that I want other people to have a positive experience with it too,” she says. “Students often come up with the most creative ideas because they haven’t absorbed all the boundaries yet. They’ll say something unexpected that makes you think differently.”

That openness is something Kennefick values deeply, and it has shaped both her academic work, and her vision of what education can be.

The road to Irvine

After completing her bachelor’s degree in anthropology at Colgate University in upstate New York, Kennefick took five years away from formal study for a period of reflection, growth, and exploration. She worked in her family’s seafood restaurant in coastal Massachusetts, taught high school Spanish during the height of the pandemic, and held positions in fields as varied as insurance auditing and student travel operations.

The decision to return to school came gradually. She knew she wanted to pursue graduate work, but only when she felt ready to take it on with focus and purpose. After completing a master’s program in social sciences at the University of Chicago, she spent two years working at Tufts University as a research coordinator in a community health lab, where she helped publish qualitative research in clinical journals.

“It was during that time I realized I wanted to be somewhere where I could keep asking questions and where teaching and learning were central,” she says.

That clarity led her to UC Irvine. While pursuing her master’s, she came across the work of anthropologists whose approaches challenged and inspired her. As she delved further into their research, she noticed a pattern: many had earned their doctorates at UC Irvine.

“I started looking into where they did their Ph.D.s, and it was UCI,” she says. As she learned more about the program, it began to feel like the right fit.

“I was really drawn to how the department approaches the field,” she says. “There’s this culture of academic flexibility. People are encouraged to follow ideas where they lead, even if that means changing directions.”

Ideas that matter

That freedom to explore has shaped Kennefick’s evolving research interests, which bridge medical anthropology, environmental health, and science and technology studies. She’s especially interested in how chronic illnesses develop in response to climate stress, and how certain diseases remain poorly understood—often because they affect populations that are marginalized. She also studies how diagnoses like ADHD are interpreted and reshaped by patients themselves, particularly in online communities where people share their lived experiences.

In both cases, what drives her is a desire to make knowledge legible—not only to scholars, but to clinicians, patients, and communities. Showing remarkable awareness for someone early in her career, she’s already thinking about how the impact of her research depends on how well it’s communicated.

“Research doesn’t do much good if it only circulates in academic journals. If we want it to matter, we have to find ways to reach people beyond the university,” she says.

Kristin's family

A collaborative kind of learning

From the start, Kennefick felt UC Irvine offered the kind of intellectual environment she was looking for. But what she didn’t anticipate was just how meaningful the community itself would become.

“I don’t think, for the majority of people, that a Ph.D. is something that you can do alone,” she says. “Especially in anthropology, where so much of the research is individual, it really helps to have a group you can think with.”

She met two close peers from her cohort during the department’s admitted student visit weekend and remembers feeling immediate relief.

“I knew if they were going to be here, I would be happy,” she says.

Since then, their intellectual and emotional support has only deepened. They share frustrations, workshop ideas, and write together.

“We push each other, but it’s not competitive,” she says. “There’s a lot of mutual respect.”

That spirit of care also extends beyond her cohort. The year above hers made a concerted effort to build connections with the new students, modeling a kind of horizontal mentorship that Kennefick and her peers hope to continue.

“They made themselves so available,” she says. “They didn’t have to, but they did. And that meant a lot.”

Faculty, too, have been generous with their time and encouragement. One of her first-year professors, associate professor António Tomás, recalls Kennefick’s presence in the classroom vividly.

“Kristen was my best student in the class,” he says. “She is rigorous; she reads everything, and she engages with the readings with empathy and sensitivity. She wrote the best paper I’ve graded lately—she read beyond the syllabus and brought new perspectives to the course.”

“And she is a nice person to be around,” Tomás adds. “All her colleagues seem to like her and appreciate her. And she seems to care about them as well.”

That mutual care—for ideas, for students, for the community of scholarship—has become a defining part of Kennefick’s experience. In the end, it wasn’t just a love of learning that brought her here. For Kennefick, the real power of learning lies in what happens when people collaborate and grow together.

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Small Fellowships Help Grad Student Make Big Waves in Beach Preservation

Via UCI Samueli School of Engineering

Even before he finished his doctorate at UC Irvine, Daniel Kahl’s research was making waves, forcing scientists and policymakers to rethink conventional wisdom about how beaches shrink over time. He has presented his findings to the US Army Corps of Engineers, members of congress, and various county and city officials, as they consider ways to combat coastal erosion and rising sea levels.

“People are seeing what’s happened to beaches in their lifetime, so they’re bringing a lot of energy to the issue,” says Kahl, a graduate student in civil and environmental engineering. “They want healthy beaches for their kids to enjoy, and I want the same thing, too.”

Kahl credits his successful research endeavors to small, high-impact grants and fellowships like the Dean’s Leadership Council Community Impact Fellowship and the La Verne Noyes Fellowship Award, which funded his master’s degree.

“I’m extremely thankful for those smaller scholarships because they gave me the opportunity to pursue research that makes a difference in our community, and they directly changed my life,” Kahl says.

It’s no surprise that Kahl, who loves surfing, spear fishing and lobster hunting, has spent most of his career committed to preserving Southern California’s shoreline. After earning a bachelor’s in marine biology from UC San Diego, he worked for an environmental consulting firm where he spent time boating, scuba diving and piloting drones to monitor the impact of coastal engineering projects on sealife. He was particularly intrigued by efforts to replenish sand at Southern California’s shrinking beaches – but realized he needed engineering expertise to truly answer his questions about these programs. Kahl connected with UC Irvine’s Brett Sanders, Chancellor’s Professor of civil and environmental engineering, and eventually joined Sanders’ UCI Flood Lab to embark on a master’s.

Kahl’s initial research focused on inland flood modeling, including an award-winning study showing that socioeconomically disadvantaged communities have disproportionately higher flood risks in Los Angeles County. When Kahl finished his degree, he started a job at an engineering firm. But on Kahl’s first day in the office, Sanders called: their grant proposal to NASA had been approved, providing $675,000 plus access to satellites to monitor coastal erosion over time.

Kahl returned to UC Irvine as a doctoral student, and developed a new model to explain how sands shift at Southern California’s beaches, and used satellite imagery to validate it. Previously believed to always flow south, sand actually travels north in many locations, he found. His research appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, and then garnered publicity across the region, attracting the attention of municipal officials and policy makers.

“Daniel’s experience and impact underscores the synergies at UC Irvine emerging between graduate education, research, and partnerships with communities,” says Sanders. “Our collaborative approach is a recipe for research that matters, not to mention the production of highly trained people who are capable of delivering effective solutions to the complex climate challenges we face today.”

As coastal communities grapple with disappearing beaches, Kahl and his expertise promise to remain in high demand.

“I like to think that there’s a way we can better manage our beaches. We have tools in our toolbox, but we need data and information about the situation along the coast so that we implement the most sustainable, sensible strategy,” Kahl says. “I’ve built my entire life around preserving coastal natural resources, and I’m grateful that UCI has helped me develop a skill set to continue addressing these pressing issues.”

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Tyler’s Tribe Foundation and UC Irvine Partner to Fund ALS Rsearch

Members of the Tyler's Tribe Foundation and UCI Graduate Division posing with an endowment check to help fund ALS research at UCI.

The Tyler’s Tribe Foundation was founded by Meghan Decker after her brother, Tyler, was diagnosed with ALS at just 26 years old. What began as a personal mission to support Tyler has grown into a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness and funding for ALS patients and their families, helping cover the enormous costs of living with the disease. Through events, partnerships, and initiatives like the Tyler’s Tribe Foundation Endowment for ALS Research at UC Irvine, the organization is also fueling critical research to one day find a cure. The endowment was created last year thanks to a $100,000 gift from Tyler’s Tribe.

This fall, Tyler’s Tribe invites supporters to swing into action at the Adapt x Tyler’s Tribe Golf Tournament on Monday, October 13, 2025, at Shadowridge Golf Club. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or a first-time putter, the day promises fun, camaraderie, and a chance to support ALS patients—plus a prize for the best Old Florida golf attire! Click here or email contact@tylerstribe.com to get involved.

In the following Q&A, Meghan shares the journey of starting Tyler’s Tribe, supporting patients, and partnering with researchers, offering a deeply personal look at the impact of ALS and the hope for breakthroughs on the horizon.

Q: How did Tyler’s Tribe get started?
A: I started Tyler’s Tribe with my brother Michael. At first, it was just about supporting Tyler—we held golf tournaments and events to help cover his medical expenses. But as people began reaching out with their own stories of losing loved ones to ALS or struggling to afford care, I felt called to expand.

What began as a family effort quickly grew, and within a year we became a nonprofit. Since then, we’ve helped more than 50 ALS patients and are currently supporting over 25. ALS is often called an “old man’s disease,” but that’s no longer true—many of our patients are women under 40. The disease doesn’t discriminate, and it’s affecting younger people every day.

Even though the fight is hard, I believe breakthroughs are coming. I can feel it in my bones—big changes are on the horizon for ALS research.

Q: What was the process like for you and your family learning about Tyler’s diagnosis?
A: Tyler was only 26 when he was diagnosed in July 2020, right in the middle of COVID. At first, it just seemed like little things—muscle twitches, trouble keeping up when we worked out. But the turning point came when he went surfing and told my mom, “I couldn’t get up.” That was when we knew something was seriously wrong.

It was tough to get answers, but a general practitioner quickly referred us to a neurologist. By mid-July, we had the official ALS diagnosis. We went to five more neurologists hoping someone would say it was something else, but they all confirmed it. Hearing “ALS” for a 26-year-old was devastating—it felt unreal until every doctor told us the same thing.

Tyler is an introvert, so the spotlight hasn’t been easy for him. But he’s in awe of how big the movement has grown and deeply grateful for the support. Honestly, we all are—it feels like the community has wrapped our family in a hug for the past five years, and it still amazes us.

Q: How long after the diagnosis did you create Tyler’s Tribe?
A: We announced the foundation to the world on August 25th, 2020 and have been going non-stop ever since.

Q: In 2024 you started an endowment with UC Irvine to support ALS research. How does it work?
A: The endowment provides funding for UCI researchers studying ALS—especially bold or unconventional ideas that are often hard to get funded. It started with $100,000, but the goal is to spark discoveries that can attract much larger investments if they show promise. 

Q: How did the connection with UC Irvine start?
A: It was completely Marissa Norys’ (Senior Director of Engagement Programs) idea—she brought it to our board, and we loved it. Partnering with UCI is mutually beneficial: they’re supporting the community, and it helps us gain more visibility locally while continuing to serve patients nationwide. 

Q: How can someone support Tyler’s Tribe?
A: Join us at our annual golf tournament on October 13th—it’s a fun day with great food, live music, and a party atmosphere, all while raising money for ALS patients. Even if you can’t donate, you can still help by spreading the word. Awareness matters—you never know who’s been touched by ALS until you start the conversation.

Q: What has the experience been like with the 25 patients you mentioned?
A: At first growth was slow, but soon word of mouth from the ALS community brought in five new patient requests a week. We now partner with other ALS organizations to stretch support as far as possible—sometimes even paying patients’ electric bills, since losing power can mean losing access to oxygen.

Most people don’t realize insurance barely covers ALS expenses—95% comes out of pocket. Even something as essential as a wheelchair can cost $250,000, yet insurance might only cover $30,000. While our ultimate goal is to help find a cure, right now we’re focused on directly funding patients’ needs.

Q: How is Tyler doing these days?
A: Tyler is what’s called a slow progressor—he’s been fighting ALS for nearly seven years and can still walk with help, which is rare. But aside from that, he now relies on others for everything, even something as simple as scratching an itch. His mind is fully intact while his body continues to be taken from him, which is the harsh reality of ALS.

Q: How has Tyler felt about Tyler’s Tribe?
A: Tyler is an introvert, so the spotlight hasn’t been easy for him. But he’s in awe of how big the movement has grown and deeply grateful for the support. Honestly, we all are—it feels like the community has wrapped our family in a hug for the past five years, and it still amazes us.

Q: Beyond a cure, what do you hope research will find?
A: A true diagnostic test. Right now, ALS is diagnosed by ruling out everything else, which forces patients through painful and invasive procedures. If researchers could create one clear, painless test, patients wouldn’t have to endure years of uncertainty—some even wait five years for a diagnosis. That alone would be life changing.