2020 Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Graduate Paper Competition Winners Announced

Posted January 28, 2020

The student author of a paper examining sexism’s impact in women’s health research, as well as other authors of papers on cyber warfare, postharvest loss and technology development, were honored Tuesday Jan. 30 as winners of the 2020 Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Graduate Paper Competition.

Interim Dean John Tone presented the awards to graduate students Sharon Rachel, Karim Farhat, Karl Grindal, Olufunke Adebola, and Jeremy Pesner at the Career, Research, and Innovation Development Conference (CRIDC) awards ceremony at Georgia Institute of Technology’s Global Learning Center.

Rachel, a Ph.D. student in the School of History and Sociology, received the first place award and $1,500 for “Ignoring Sexism is Sexism! A Review of Recent Sociological Research on Women and Health.”

Farhat and Grindal, doctoral students in the School of Public Policy, won second place and split $1,000 for their paper on U.S. Cyber Command strategies, “Signal and Noise: Deterrence and Persistent Engagement at Crosscurrents.”

Adebola and Pesner received third place and $750 each. Adebola, a Ph.D. student in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, wrote about the policy ramifications of postharvest loss. Pesner, a doctoral student in the School of Public Policy, wrote about the relationship between scientific research and the societal benefit of technology development and commercialization in the paper, “Exploring Links between Research Proposals and Societal Impact.”

“CRIDC is a wonderful tradition in the Ivan Allen College: a forum for showcasing the intellectual and creative talents of our graduate students, who, year after year, produce important original scholarly work with the potential to improve and serve society,” Tone said. “The competition was part of the two-day conference and was open to Ivan Allen College master’s students, Ph.D. candidates, and post-docs. The conference, organized by the Graduate Student Government Association, also included workshops, poster competitions and a career fair.”

Many of the winners and other entrants will present their papers at the Ivan Allen College CRIDC Graduate Paper Conference from 8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 31, 2020 in Room 102 of the Stephen C. Hall Building. That conference will be divided between six general topics: security, environmental impact, feminism/race, social impact of technology, development, and information technology.

Here is the full list of entries:

Michael Bivona (HSOC), “Blowback: Technology, Law, and the Emerging Shape of Justice under Drones”

Suon Choi (INTA), “The Effects of Science and Technology Policy on the North Korean Nuclear Program”

Karim Farhat & Karl Grindal (SPP), “Signal and Noise: Deterrence and Persistent Engagement at Crosscurrents”

Adriana Alvarado Garcia (IC/CoC), “Quotidian Report: Grassroots Data Practices to Address Public Safety”

Tony Harding (ECON), “From Weather Fluctuations to Aggregate Climate Impacts”

Olufunke Adebola (INTA), “Institutions: Drivers of postharvest loss”

Archana Ghodeswar (ECON) & Dr. Matthew Oliver, “The Economics of Industrial Ecology: Evidence of First-Order Effects from the Indian Electric Power Sector”

Eric Steagall (HSOC), “’The Real Problem of the American Negro Is His Brain’: Black Athletic Success and the Shift of Scientific Racism in the Twentieth Century”

Brandy Pettijohn (DM/LMC), “Networked Publics, Viral Stories, and the Birth Justice Movement”

Sharon Rachel (HSOC), “Ignoring Sexism Is Sexism! A Review of Recent Sociological Research on Women and Health”

Amber Brooks (HSOC), “The Technology of Pharmaceuticals: Biopower and the Reproduction of the Hysterical Woman”

Camila Apablaza (SPP), “A field experiment in workplace electric vehicle charging”

Alyssa Rumsey (DM/LMC), “Manufacturing Change: The Future of Work(ers)”

Anmol Soni (SPP), “Are All Incentives Created Equal? Role of Policy Design in State-Level Electric Vehicle Sales”

Li Zheng (HSOC), “Is Diet-Tracking a Road to Health, or Just a Fancy Lifestyle? Quantitative Research on Attitudes and Behaviors”

Xiaoyu Dong (ECON), “Measuring Multidimensional Well-being: An Application to the United States”

Olga Churkina (SPP), “Who does better on school tests? Evidence from Sweden”

Elizabeth Osman (INTA), “Understanding Nostalgia through Perceptions and System Outputs in the Visegrad Countries”

Jeremy Pesner (SPP), “Exploring Links between Research Proposals and Societal Impact”

Daniel Schiff (SPP), “Citizen Concerns about Bias, Transparency, and Lack of Human Agency in Government Use of AI: Evidence from a Survey Experiment”

Eunji Emily Kim (INTA), “The Difference of AI Technology Development between the U.S. and China”

Alejandra Ruiz Leon (HSOC), “Science closes the Black Box, Museums are opening it”

Yuchen Zhao (DM/LMC), “VR Touch Museum”