Sahila Kudalkar, a Master of Public Policy student at Harris Public Policy, worked with Harris Assistant Professor Eyal Frank on a project that examines how the large-scale adoption of the pesticide DDT in the 1940s impacted public health, specifically infant mortality, in the cotton-cultivating American south. Her fellowship consisted of data scraping, cleaning and analysis, and examined how cancer incidence and mortality rates varied by demographics and agricultural intensity pre- and post-DDT adoption. She will be joining the PhD program in Sustainable Development at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in Fall 2023.
“I have enjoyed applying my Harris training and previous conservation experience to research. Working with Dr. Frank has helped me to better measure and interpret the impacts of environment degradation, and understand the effort that goes into producing empirically robust, policy relevant research.”