GRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS TO PROMOTE DIVERSTY IN ECONOMICS
2020 Graduate Fellowship Recipient
Introducing our first Fellow for the Graduate Fellowship to Promote Diversity in Economics!
Congratulations and welcome to
Maryam Masoud Ahmed
our first Fellowship recipient! Maryam will be a PhD candidate in Economics at SBU
beginning
Fall 2020. She graduated from The University of Grenoble Alps, France in 2019 with a Bachelor’s
in Economic Engineering and Management. Maryam worked in entry level positions in
accounting, finance and banking. She ended up being obsessed with Economics, which
made her decide that she wanted a career in academia. Maryam received her Master’s
degree in Economics in 2020 from New Mexico State University, her Master’s thesis
was about socio-economic factors that affect happiness in southwestern counties of
the US. In her spare time, Maryam loves playing tennis because it’s a great sport!
2021 Graduate Fellowship Recipient
Introducing our TWO Fellowship recipients for the Graduate Fellowship to Promote Diversity in Economics!
Congratulations and welcome to Dana Golden and Shafira Widjaja!
Dana Golden
is a first-year economics PhD student whose research interests focus mainly on the
intersection between game theoretical analysis of multi-agent systems, applied data
analysis, and the tech sector within economics. Dana originated in Georgia, went
to Georgia Tech for undergrad and an MS in economics. During college, Dana worked
as an accountant for the Defense Department, as an athletic tutor for numerous mathematical
and social scientific subjects, and as a graduate teaching assistant for a philosophy
class. Following her MS in economics, she moved to Kansas City where she worked for
the US Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service as an economist and published
the oil crops outlook report and associated data product as well as the season average
price data product, and state exports trade data product. While at the USDA, she also
taught courses on programming and data analysis using SQL, R, and Python and wrote
and presented papers and posters on price forecasting using agricultural futures and
the usage of natural language processing to generate outlook reports and research
papers in economics. During her free time, she enjoys writing, reading, standup comedy,
programming, and playing and designing board games. She happily reports that that
last year she hit the milestone of 120+ books in a single year.
Shafira Widjaja
was born in Columbia, South Carolina but grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia. Although
she holds a bachelor’s deg
ree in civil
engineering, she has always been interested in studying Economics. Shafira took her
MA in Economics at UT Austin where she decided to study further and pursue a PhD at
SBU. She is interested in deepening her knowledge and doing research in Game Theory
and Industrial Organization.
For more information on the fellowship, go to: GRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS TO PROMOTE DIVERSTY IN ECONOMICS