Sahila Kudalkar, a Master of Public Policy student at Harris Public Policy, is working with Harris Assistant Professor Eyal Frank on a project that examines how the large-scale adoption on DDT in the 1940s impacted public health in the US south. Her fellowship consists of data scraping, cleaning and analysis, and examines how cancer incidence and mortality rates varied by demographics and agricultural intensity pre and post DDT adoption. Sahila’s research interests include causal inference to estimate impacts of environmental policy. She is particularly interested in wildlife conservation, climate change, and migration.

“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.”