MITRE Graduate Student Research Awards May 2013
Conducting independent research is a hallmark of economics graduate education. With the explosion of technological resources in recent years, doctoral students have a virtually unlimited supply of world-wide data sources that can be tapped for use in their dissertation research. Coupled with the expansion of students interested in pursuing careers in development, experimental and survey-based research, the MITRE Graduate Student Research program provides a way for students to acquire the data that they need. Whether it is by purchasing a set of restricted data, paying for access to high-performance computing resources, travelling to another continent to collect data or presenting the results of their research to their peers (and potential employers), MITRE Graduate Student Research Awards and MITRE Graduate Conference/Travel Awards are a critical component to meeting the educational and professional development needs of the students in our doctoral program.
In 2012, the Department of Economics held the first call for proposals for doctoral student summer research. In this call for proposals, 7 MITRE Graduate Conference/Travel Awards and 14 MITRE Graduate Research Awards were made, providing over $55,000 of support for economics doctoral students.
MITRE Graduate Conference/Travel Awards allow our doctoral students to present their work at national and international conferences, work with faculty overseas, and participate in professional workshops.
MITRE Graduate Research Awards can cover a wide variety of topics and research needs. Students may apply for funding to collect, data enter/code or purchase data, to purchase computing time on HPC resources (high performance computational clusters) or shared computing resources, and much more. In the initial MITRE award cycle, funded projects included those investigating:
- the prevalence of counterfeit anti-malarial drugs in Africa
- risk-taking/choice-making related to healthcare in Africa
- the prevalence of mortgage default
- the impact of federal granting programs
- the effects of gasoline prices on automobile purchase choices
- the impact of the employment guarantee program in India
- mining rights & fracking
- impacts of home equity loans
- impact of access to childcare services in developing regions in Central America
- impact of the post-Katrina Louisiana Road Home program
- deregulation of electricity markets
- the elasticity of taxable income
- economic impact of highways & railways
- impacts of fine arts educational programs on student academic success, and many more.
MITRE Graduate Awards have a thrice-yearly application cycle. Submitted proposals are reviewed each application cycle by the Doctoral Program Committee and are awarded on a competitive basis. Awards are generally up to $5,000 with a project period of one year.
