Important Info
Open postdoctoral position through the Stanford Impact Labs Postdoctoral Fellowship Program with Profs. Irene Lo, Itai Ashlagi, and the Stanford Impact Lab on Equitable Access to Education.
Stanford Impact Labs is an initiative at Stanford University that invests in highly motivated teams of researchers and practitioners—impact labs—to generate new insights and solutions to persistent social problems. To begin in September 2024, Stanford Impact Labs is now accepting applications to the following two-year postdoctoral fellowship program opportunity.
Profs. Irene Lo and Itai Ashlagi and the Stanford Impact Lab on Equitable Access to Education are seeking a diverse pool of applicants who wish to join a team-based, collaborative community and who value the different skills, expertise, and perspectives necessary to design, conduct, sustain, and disseminate public impact research. We encourage applications from individuals from a broad diversity of PhD-granting institutions, backgrounds, and life experiences who would strengthen and diversify our community of scholars.
The Stanford Impact Lab on Equitable Access to Education provides algorithmic and data-driven solutions providing fairer access to public educational resources. The lab enables school districts to optimize large-scale equitable resource allocation decisions, including how to zone schools, and where to offer specialized programs, increase school capacity, or assign teachers.
Based on their expertise, the postdoctoral fellow will engage with the lab community on a variety of projects such as:
- mechanisms for fair allocation under uncertainty, such as teacher assignment and program/facility location
- information provision in education matching markets
- computationally tractable approaches to school redistricting with choice
- aggregating community feedback on resource allocation policies.
Projects will be defined and scoped by the postdoc collaboratively with lab PIs. In addition, the postdoctoral fellow will have opportunities to work closely with the lab’s school district partners, and will support the lab by leading outreach to other school districts in the lab’s network interested in taking a socio-technical approach to assigning educational resources.
Mentorship Structure
The postdoctoral fellow will be supervised by Profs. Irene Lo and Itai Ashlagi and will collaborate with research scholars, staff, and students affiliated with the lab. Mentorship of the postdoctoral fellow will be structured according to research and professional interests.
In addition, a goal of the Stanford Impact Labs Postdoctoral Fellowship Program is to create a diverse community of scholars who are committed to producing research that has a positive impact on society. Postdoctoral fellows will have the opportunity to engage with one another and with the broader Stanford Impact Labs team and community, and will participate in professional development, cohort-building, and other programming activities.
Qualifications
- Completion of all doctoral requirements within the past three years and no later than September 1st, 2024
- Has research expertise on mechanism design or optimization approaches to resource allocation. Sub-areas of interest include:
- Dynamic mechanism design
- Robust optimization and optimization under uncertainty
- Information design, preference elicitation, and social choice
- Applied optimization and fast computation
- Demonstrates excellent written and verbal communication skills for both academic and non-academic audiences
- Is committed to advancing solutions to social problems through rigorous research, and communicating research findings to diverse audiences, including non-academic audiences
- Wishes to grow their collaborative research skills and ability to partner with organizations
Candidates will be evaluated according to their:
- Scientific record and potential
- Commitment to pursuing scholarship that can impact public policy or social outcomes
- Potential contribution to the research team
- Potential contribution to the Stanford Impact Labs Postdoctoral Fellowship program and the educational activities, goals, and community of Stanford Impact Labs
- Potential for scholarly careers that will contribute to addressing historical inequities and advancing diversity through their research, teaching, and service
Timeline
- Review of applications will begin on 12/18/2023.
- Those advancing will be notified by 01/15/2024 and may be asked to submit additional materials, including letters of recommendation, and may be invited to interview. Please do not send emails asking about your status; you will be contacted by the faculty lead if you are advancing in the review process.
- Final selections will be made by 03/15/2024.
To apply
To be ensured of full consideration, please send your complete application by 12/17/2023 in a single PDF to SILpostdoc@stanford.edu with the subject line: “SIL Postdoc_Lo”.
Complete applications should include:
- Letter of interest explaining your motivation to become a postdoc with the respective research lab through the Stanford Impact Labs postdoctoral fellowship program (500 words max).
- Short responses to the following three prompts, in 300 words or less for each:
1. Please provide a short description of your dissertation research and broader research agenda.
2. How does your research training and expertise prepare you to make progress towards understanding and identifying practical solutions to social problems?
3. In what ways have you contributed towards and/or demonstrated a commitment to inclusion, equity, and diversity through your academic career, and how do you plan to advance these commitments professionally?
- CV: Provide a curriculum vitae of no more than 5 pages.
- One representative writing sample.
The expected base pay for this position is $78,734. The pay offered to the selected candidate will be determined based on factors including (but not limited to) the qualifications of the selected candidate, budget availability, and internal equity.
