Aldo Barrita
SCHOLAR BIO
Aldo Barrita is a queer Latinx Ph.D. candidate in his 4th year in the Psychological and Brain Sciences program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). He was born in Mexico and immigrated to the US when he was 16. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2017. His research focus includes how different forms of discrimination, primarily microaggressions, psychologically impact individuals from marginalized communities. Specifically, he is interested in Latinx and/or LGBTQ+ experiences with microaggressions. Aldo Barrita is the Chair-Elect for the American Psychological Association of Graduate Students (APAGS) and Past-Student Representative for the National Latinx Psychology Association (NLPA). In addition, he has been awarded prestigious honors and recognitions such as the 2021 NLPA Distinguished Student Service Award and the 2022 Barbara Smith & Jewel E. Horvat Graduate Student Award for Research on Queer Individuals of Color Award from the Society for Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity and Race (APA Division 45). As of March 2023, Aldo’s publication record includes 11 publications, seven book chapters, and over 35 conference presentations. In 2022 became a Mellon Fellow receiving the 2022-23 Crossing Latinidades Mellon Humanities Fellowship, and in 2023 he was awarded the 2023-24 UNLV Barrick Graduate Fellowship.
Aldo’s service, leadership, research, and scholarship focus on the liberation of minoritized groups using an intersectional approach to elevate individuals with multiple marginalized identities and their experiences with oppression.
DISSERTATION ABSTRACT
Aldo’s dissertation includes findings from three independent studies exploring the psychological impact and coping strategies involved when marginalized individuals experience microaggressions. Findings from his first study highlight how LGBTQ+ people of color are impacted by intersectional microaggressions differently based on factors such as cisgender privilege, where gender expansive people report being more vulnerable to these attacks. His second study explores how people of color experiencing higher levels of psychological distress from racial microaggressions also report higher attitudes to use alcohol or drugs to cope with the effects of everyday racism. Finally, his third study builds on his previous works and explores how both individual racism and heterosexism as intersectional microaggressions are often internalized among LGBTQ+ people of color as a response to these aggressions, and this internalization was associated with higher levels of psychological distress, particularly for gender expansive people. Using an intersectional and multi-level approach, Aldo’s dissertation aims to bring to light the experiences of those at the margins within marginalized groups. Part of his dissertation work is forthcoming this year in the journal of Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity and the Journal for Substance Use and Addictions Treatment.
Rafael Ceja Ayala
SCHOLAR BIO:
My name is Rafael Ceja Ayala, a fifth-year mathematics Ph.D. candidate working under the guidance of Dr. Isaac Harris. I am an applied mathematician whose research interests are in direct and inverse problems for Partial Differential Equations. I was born and raised in a small town in Michoacán, México until I moved to Ukiah, California at the age of 13. I am passionate about supporting students of color, especially mathematicians of color. Aside from my love for mathematics, I enjoy writing poetry, taking photos and being outdoors.
Coming from an underrepresented group, I firsthand understand the challenges of navigating higher education. For this reason, I have committed myself to supporting diversity, equity and inclusion in academia. Representation plays a powerful role in student persistence and success, and as a result I have sought out opportunities to mentor undergraduate students of color. As a participant of the McNair and LSAMP programs, I understand the need to provide support and opportunities to students of color. Moreover, I see diversity every day in our classrooms and understand how it continues to teach us that we can be better when we accept our differences. I am certain that representation is a key to enrich knowledge and success in academia and inclusion drives us to be aware of students in order for them to be successful.
DISSERTATION ABSTRACT:
We provide an analytical study of the transmission eigenvalue problem with two conductivity parameters. We assume that the underlying physical model is given by the scattering of a plane wave for an isotropic scatterer. In previous studies, this eigenvalue problem was analyzed with one conductive boundary parameter whereas we will consider the case of two parameters. We prove the existence and discreteness of the transmission eigenvalues as well as study the dependance on the physical parameters. We are able to prove monotonicity of the first transmission eigenvalue with respect to the parameters and consider the limiting procedure as the second boundary parameter vanishes. Lastly, we provide extensive numerical experiments to validate the theoretical work.
Andrew Hutchens
SCHOLAR BIO:
Andrew is a 4th-year economics PhD student in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and graduate student affiliate in the Center for Environmental and Resource Economic Policy at North Carolina State University. His research studies firm behavior in the changing energy and transportation sectors, encompassing topics such as drought’s effects on thermoelectric power plant operations, adjacent markets’ adaptation to the growing electric vehicle charging market, and battery storage’s effects on renewable energy curtailment. When not engrossed in research, he enjoys feeding his passion for aviation (and honoring his short-lived attempt at becoming an aerospace engineer) by plane-spotting, attending airshows, and reading enough about aircraft to wrongly claim he could fly one if they would just let him in the cockpit.
By virtue of being a social science concerned with the study of human decision-making, I believe that the field of economics can greatly benefit from increased diversity, equity, and inclusion. Whether these factors manifest in the student body or faculty, having a broader set of perspectives contributing to the field can only improve the robustness, richness, and applicability of its studies. I consider doing my part to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion in academia to be a professional obligation born out of respect and appreciation for those who helped me get to where I am today. As such, I fully intend to pay it forward by supporting and encouraging members of underrepresented groups to expand their presence in the field (be it in academia, government, or the private sector).
DISSERTATION ABSTRACT:
As two of the leading pollution emitters, the energy and transportation sectors are undergoing significant changes as they adapt to climate change itself and the policies that it has given rise to. My dissertation aims to understand the machinations of firm behavior (1) as these changes spur new market mechanisms for new energy sources/technologies that differ from their predecessors and (2) as current markets in both sectors contend with such changes using their existing energetic/technological composition. I accomplish this through three studies within the intersection of energy economics and industrial organization.
The first study analyzes gas stations’ adaptation to the electric vehicle market. These stations have historically been the dominant force in the refueling market and must now contend with the rise of electric vehicles and their dependence on charging infrastructure. Stations essentially face a market entry decision through their main adaptation choice: enter the recharging market by installing chargers of their own or abstain. Using discrete-time survival models of stations’ time-to-adaptation, I first estimate the importance of market characteristics (e.g., number of electric vehicles, number of other public chargers) and electric utility barriers (namely demand charges) for stations’ adaptation probability. I then construct a structural model of station recharging market entry with endogenous charger network choice to estimate the underlying parameters of stations’ profit functions and analyze counterfactual public charging and electric utility rate structure scenarios. Preliminary results show that the number of public chargers in a station’s market and their utility demand charge are the most important factors for their adaptation decision.
The second study examines thermoelectric power plants’ response to drought. Drought effectively increases plants’ marginal cost of generation by reducing their efficiency (absent any response by the plant), which should cause plants to respond in a cost-minimizing fashion (i.e., capacity factor reductions and/or efficiency improvements to offset the increase in marginal cost). However, incentives that motivate such cost-minimizing behavior are only present in areas of the U.S. where competitive wholesale electricity markets exist; areas with vertically integrated monopoly utility controlling the wholesale electricity market provide no such incentives. The continental U.S. is then an ideal natural laboratory within which to test whether competitive markets actually work as intended while also examining the (amplifying or mitigating) role that market-level drought has on plants’ response to their own-drought conditions (since the extent of drought, or market-drought, affects the electricity supply curve). Using granular data on the Palmer Drought Severity Index and two-way fixed effects regression models of plant capacity factor and heat rate, results show that competitive plants’ drought responses do indeed depend on the extent of market-drought in their market and align with our cost-minimizing expectation: plants in drought improve their efficiency when market-drought decreases and plants not in drought experience capacity factor increases when market-drought increases. Moreover, non-market plants do not respond to drought (as expected).
Lastly, the third study assesses the effects of battery storage on solar and wind curtailment in California and Texas’ wholesale electricity markets. Curtailment of electricity generated by renewable energy sources like solar and wind occurs when too much electricity is generated relative to electricity demand and output is reduced as a consequence. Unfortunately, renewable energy (particularly solar) production peaks precisely during the off-peak electricity demand hours and is at its lowest during peak electricity demand hours, meaning that lots of renewable energy is curtailed and not used to cleanly meet peak demand. Battery storage offers a solution insofar as it allows excess renewable energy to be stored for later use rather than being curtailed, but whether it has actually served this purpose and how it has affected other generation methods is not well understood. This study analyzes high-frequency electricity generation data in California and Texas’ wholesale electricity markets to determine the effects of battery storage on solar and wind curtailment in each market. Preliminary results indicate mixed effects that vary significantly across the hours in a day.
Anuli Ndubuisi,
SCHOLAR BIO:
Anuli Ndubuisi is a doctoral candidate in Curriculum and Pedagogy specializing in Engineering Education at the University of Toronto. She is an educator with the Engineering Science Division at the University of Toronto, as well as a researcher with the International Virtual Engineering Student Teams (InVEST) project at the Institute for Studies in Transdisciplinary Engineering and Practice (ISTEP) and the Encore Lab at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). Anuli has an engineering background, a Master’s in business administration from Manchester University, and a combined 18 years of experience in the engineering profession, education, and research. Prior to OISE Anuli worked on global engineering projects across multiple locations around the world with Shell International. Anuli is a recipient of the Engineering Education Teaching Fellowship Program award, the International Experience award, the McCuaig-Throop Bursary for academic merit, and the U of T Student Engagement Award for her contributions to global education. Anuli is passionate about using her professional knowledge and experience to support engineering students to gain a global engineering education. Her research is broadly focused on inclusive and collaborative learning across boundaries in diverse groups — particularly with learners in complex collaboration, global settings, and international contexts. Her research interests include professional identity development, inclusivity, complex collaborations, global engineering education, global competence, international online collaborative learning, and knowledge communities. (See LinkedIn profile)
I am passionate about supporting underrepresented groups to navigate the education landscape. Presently, I serve as the co-chair for the postsecondary education working group of the Canadian Black Scientists Network’s (CBSN) BE-STEMM Beyond Borders project, where I examine and create opportunities for enhancing Black students’ experiences in higher education. I am always looking for ways to motivate and inspire the next generation of students to learn and develop their skills. For instance, as one of the founders of Engineering Graduate Connections, I organized workshops that created awareness and connected Black undergraduate students to graduate studies, research opportunities, and career pathways in the engineering department. I found that students appreciated the opportunity to hear about the journey toward graduate school from people who were like them as well as the interesting ways they could obtain research experience outside the curriculum.
DISSERTATION ABSTRACT:
Educators recognize that future engineers need to learn to collaborate with diverse stakeholders and tackle ‘wicked’ problems across complex collaboration boundaries (Engineers Canada, 2021). Although complex collaborations, which involve working across organizational, disciplinary, cultural, or geographical boundaries, can lead to group conflict (Jehn, 1997), they can also create opportunities for transformational learning (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011; Star & Griesemer, 1989). Study abroad programs offer opportunities for engineering students to engage in global collaborations and gain these competencies (Institute of International Education, 2021), however, equity, access, and inclusion concerns including advancements in educational technologies post-COVID have motivated educators to explore strategies for incorporating global learning into their programs (Soria & Troisi, 2014). One approach to global learning is the use of Global Competency Modules (GCM) to support students’ complex collaborations within global engineering projects. This design-based research investigates the development and enactment of a GCM curriculum across two global engineering programs at the University of Toronto. The study findings are expected to highlight how engaging students in global engineering education within virtual international projects and global engineering project-based learning courses allowed them to navigate interdisciplinary, intercultural, and metacognitive boundary-crossing situations and facilitated students’ transformational learning through problem-solving and idea improvement across multiple boundaries.