Viviane Sanfelice, Assistant Professor, Economics
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My research lies in the field of empirical applied microeconomics, with application in development, public and urban economics. I assess how several factors, which are amenable to public interventions, affect more vulnerable populations, such as children and women. My work focuses on how crime impacts human behavior and how criminal activity in cities respond to certain interventions.
Coming from Brazil, a country with high crime rates compared to the U.S., made me realize the toll crime imposes on societies, and therefore its importance as a research agenda. Before initiating my doctoral degree, I worked at the city of São Paulo Education Department where the demand to estimate the effectiveness of potential or already implemented programs was quite high and extremely important for the city’s education system. This experience got me interested in public policy assessment. I also worked as a junior professional associate at the World Bank in the Latin American and the Caribbean poverty, inequality and gender unit. Besides being exposed to a broader range of topics in Economics, working at the World Bank gave me practical knowledge in data use and statistical tools so crucial for empirical research.
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FEATURED PUBLICATION
Sampling bias mitigation for species occurrence modeling using machine learning methods
Victor Hugo Gutierrez-Velez, Daniel Wiese
Prof. Gutierrez explains the importance of his work:
Providing knowledge about the geographic areas occupied by different species and how that occupancy changes overtime is essential for biodiversity conservation and for controlling the spread of invasive species; however, the ability of scientists to map the areas occupied by species at a given moment is often hindered by biases associated with the time and the frequency with which samples to calibrate models are collected. I provide a methodological contribution to mitigate these biases using machine learning methods.
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