Hometown
Niteroi (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Educational and professional background
I am an economist by training (I have a BA, two masters, and one PhD, all in economics!). After completing my PhD at Princeton, I got my first job at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, CA. At RAND I learned to appreciate the value of multidisciplinary research to address important policy questions.
Previous position
Associate Professor (Research) of Economics at the University of Southern California.
What types of questions do you address in your research?
How (and through which pathways) does genetics influence social and economic outcomes? How do genetics and environmental factors jointly shape individual outcomes? Can the use of genetic data jointly with economic models shed new light on traditional economic questions such as returns to education, intergenerational transmission of health and socio-economic status (SES), and family peer effects? What is the role of social policy in mitigating inequalities arising from genetic differences?
How did you get interested in this field?
I am an applied microeconomist interested in health and labor economics. Research in these fields has shown in many different contexts that environmental factors and social policies matter for individual SES and health. More recently, advances in data and methods have allowed us to establish that genetics is an additional driver of SES and health. Given these new findings, it was a very natural next step to include the increasingly available genetic data in my studies.
What attracted you to the La Follette School?
The Initiative in Social Genomics, led by the La Follette School’s Jason Fletcher and Lauren Schmitz, is one of the world’s best collaboratives in the emerging field of social genomics. As someone very interested in this area, I can’t imagine a more exciting place to be!
How does your research intersect with policymaking?
Some of my research has shown that social policy can affect how genetics correlate with individual outcomes. For example, we have shown that a compulsory schooling reform in the UK increased education and, as a consequence, mitigated the genetic risk for dementia. This finding can offer clues on how to design policies to combat the rapidly rising number of dementia cases worldwide.
What is your approach to teaching?
I view my role as a researcher and educator as contributing to building a solid evidence base for the evaluation and implementation of public policies that aim to make peoples’ lives better. As such, a primary guiding principle of my teaching philosophy is an emphasis on the policy relevance of economic theory and empirical research. I also build into my teaching and mentoring activities strong incentives for active student participation and critical thinking.
What’s something interesting about your area of expertise that you’re excited to share with students?
There is so much we don’t know about how genetics helps shape individual outcomes and this makes this new area of research very exciting. We now have enough data and methods to confidently say that genetics matter for social outcomes, but it’s a very fast-moving field where we are learning a great deal about how genetics matter in a short amount of time.
What are you reading or watching currently?
I have two young children so I read a lot of picture books these days. Some of them have impressively beautiful art and messages, and discussing them with my kids is often my favorite part of the day. Oliver Jeffers is one of our favorite authors currently.
Hobbies and interests
I was raised by the sea and I love being in the water. I used to surf and do open water swimming in Los Angeles. I am hoping to learn how to sail in Madison’s lakes starting next May!