Ina Ganguli is Part Of Campus Team Awarded NSF Grant to Develop Tool to Aid Workers

Ina GanguliA campus team led by research professor Beverly Woolf of the College of Information and Computer Science (CICS) recently received a one-year, $838,722 grant from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Convergence Accelerator Program to support their project to create a tool for workers to analyze their profiles and skills and identify training and education to aid their career paths.

Faculty team members in addition to Woolf are Andrew Lan and Shlomo Zilberstein, CICS, Tom Juravich, sociology, Andrew Cohen, psychological and brain sciences, and Ina Ganguli, economics. For this project, they will develop algorithms and software to help companies and workers be successful in an evolving workplace. 

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Léonce Ndikumana discusses his work shaping global policy with 'Times Higher Education'

Anti-corruption economist Léonce Ndikumana discusses his humble upbringing in Burundi, his five months in solitary confinement, and how his work is shaping global policy.

"In 1988, there was a protest where the local community demanded some changes, and the government sent in troops to quell the revolt, and they began killing people from my ethnic group, the Hutu," said Ndikumana. "At that time I was teaching at the University of Burundi as a junior lecturer, and we wrote open letters to the president to try to stop these indiscriminate killings. We were arrested and spent five months in solitary confinement."

Arindrajit Dube's report on the effects of minimum wages released by the UK Government

Arin DubeProfessor Arindrajit Dube’s report on the effects of minimum wages and the impact of the National Living Wage (NLW) in the UK has just been released by the UK Government. The report finds that “overall the most up to date body of research from US, UK and other developed countries points to a very muted effect of minimum wages on employment, while significantly increasing the earnings of low paid workers.” Read the full report here.

 

 

UMass Economics in the News

Robert Pollin, Distinguished Professor of economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), comments on a $1 trillion infrastructure plan with a focus on sustainability proposed by presidential candidate and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Pollin says Buttigieg’s plan is “going in the right direction,” but “a lot hinges on where you come up with the money.” He says Sen. Elizabeth Warren “does a much more serious job of going underneath the surface than he does.” (South Bend Tribune, 1/14/20)

A news story about calls by the mayors of London and New York for cities to divest their pension funds from fossil fuel producers notes that a 2018 report co-authored by Robert Pollin, Distinguished Professor in economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute, says the divestment movement has not substantially impacted fossil fuel share prices or reduced carbon emissions. (Reuters, 1/8/20)