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

Coverage of the annual meeting of the American Economic Association quotes M.V. Lee Badgett, professor of economics and co-chair of the association’s new Committee on the Status of LGBTQ+ Individuals in the Economics Profession, formed in response to revelations of sexism, racism and harassment in the profession. Badgett says, “What I’ve heard, over and over again, is — this is the moment, we need to take advantage of it.” (The New York Times, 1/7/20)

M.V. Lee Badgett, economics and public policy, comments in a story about why a new question on the national census about same sex couples is important. She says the data generated by the question will help guide decisions on how to battle discrimination against same-sex couples and may serve as the basis for new programs to assist them. (WABE [public radio in Atlanta], 12/20/19)