Ph.D. Students

Felipe Antequera

Status: Ph.D. student                
Education: Bachelor in engineering and MSc in Engineering, both from Universidad Catolica de Chile                
Interests: Affordable housing; public infrastructure                
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Bio: Felipe Antequera is a Ph.D. student and a CONNECT program fellow at the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. His research interests include public policies related to public infrastructure development, and housing policies in his home country of Chile and Latin America — including, currently, low-income renting and sharing in Latin America and affordable housing. Antequera is a civil engineer with experience in managing infrastructure projects and was in charge of developing important infrastructure projects at the Catholic University in Chile. His future goals are to combine his experience in managing infrastructure projects with training in public policy to work in developing public infrastructure and affordable housing policies in Chile. Antequera holds a B.A. and an M.Sc. degree in civil engineering, both from the Catholic University in Chile. He is a Fulbright fellow, and his research is supported by Conicyt (through the BIO – Beca Igualdad de Oportunidades Program). 

Ryan C. Ashley

Status: Ph.D. Student, Two previous Masters Degrees                
Education: B.A. George Washington University (2013), M.S.S. Angelo State University (2016), M.A.Georgetown University (2019)                
Interests: International Relations, Security Studies, East Asia, Japan, Southeast Asia                
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Committee Chair: Dr. Sheena Greitens                
Bio: Major Ryan Ashley is an Air Force Intelligence Officer pursuing a Ph.D. in Public Policy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Public Policy and History from George Washington University, a Master's in Security Studies from Angelo State University, and a Master's of Arts in Asian Studies from Georgetown University. He has operational experience with special operations and conventional forces across the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. He is also currently an Adjunct Lecturer with the Air Force Special Operations School teaching courses on East and Southeast Asian politics, culture, and security. His Ph.D. studies focus on the security relations between Japan and member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Selena Caldera

Status: Ph.D. candidate                
Education: B.A. Government, The University of Texas at Austin; MPP, Georgetown University                
Interests: Health care; aging; social policy                
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Bio: Selena Caldera is a Ph.D. candidate with a focus on health care and aging at the LBJ School. Her previous experience includes over 10 years of research experience in public policy areas such as health care, education, immigration, and retirement income policy. She has extensive work experience in quantitative analysis, policy and legislative analysis, survey development and collection, and cost analysis. Caldera currently works at the Child and Family Research Partnership on a variety of child welfare evaluations. Previously she was the senior strategy analyst for Central Health, Travis County's healthcare district, where she analyzed the healthcare services provided by Central Health and the unmet healthcare needs in the county. Her past work includes economic research at AARP's Public Policy Institute and legislative and policy research at the Congressional Budget Office.  

Francisco A. Castellanos-Sosa

Status: Ph.D. student                
Education: B.A., Economics, UANL; M.A., Economy and Public Policy, ITESM; M.Sc., Economics, University of Texas at Austin                
Interests: Labor economics; public policy; international development                
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Bio: Francisco Castellanos-Sosa is a doctoral student at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, a graduate student trainee at the Population Research Center (PRC), and a graduate research assistant at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. He is a scholar interested in labor economics, public policy and international development with a focus on income inequality and industrial policies. Prior to entering LBJ, Castellanos-Sosa did three years of doctoral coursework in the Department of Economics at UT Austin and earned an MSc in economics. He recently served as a lecturer at the Bush School of Government & Public Service at Texas A&M University. In Mexico, he worked on the evaluation of public and budget programs, construction of economic development plans, design of competitiveness public agendas, creation of indexes and identification of strategic economic sectors, and taught several undergraduate and graduate courses at UVM. Castellanos-Sosa also holds a B.A. in Economics from the UANL and an M.A. in Economy and Public Policy from ITESM. 

Yoojin Cha

Status: Ph.D. Student                
Education: MPP (Seoul National University), BA in Economics (Seoul National University)                
Interests: environmental economics, public economics, nonmarket valuation                
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Committee Chair: Dr. Sheila Olmstead                
Bio: Yoojin Cha is a Ph.D. student at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests lie at environmental economics and public economics with a focus on nonmarket valuation. He currently estimates the values of water quality changes by using the tools of applied microeconomics.

Max Ferguson

Status: Ph.D. student                
Education: B.S., sociology, United States Military Academy at West Point; M.A., Defense and Strategic Studies, United States Naval War College                
Interests: Diplomacy; national security policy; civil-military relations                
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Bio: Max Ferguson is attending LBJ as a Goodpaster Scholar through the U.S. Army, where he serves as a Major with 15 years of active duty experience as an infantry officer. His two previous assignments were at the Department of State as a White House fellow working in the Secretary's Iran Action Group on Iran policy and as a special assistant to the chief of staff of the U.S. Army. He has previously deployed five times to Iraq, Afghanistan, and West Africa. He lives in Round Rock, Texas with his wife and three children. He enjoys fishing, paddling, running, and woodworking. 

Marion Foster

Status: Ph.D. candidate (4th year)                
Education: Mag.(FH) International Business Studies, University of Applied Sciences Kufstein (Austria), Master of Peace Studies, University of Hagen (Germany), Master of International Affairs, Texas A&M University                
Interests: Security in Europe, EU foreign and security policy, grand strategy of middle powers and small states, NATO-Russia relations.

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Chair: Prof. Jaganath Sankaran and Prof. emeritus Robert Hutchings                
Bio: Marion Foster is a fourth-year doctoral student at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Her dissertation research focuses on the role collective interpretations of the past play in shaping security policy institutions and states' behavior in the international system. She is especially interested in security issues on the European continent, including EU foreign and security policy, NATO-Russia relations, and security in the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions. Before attending graduate school, Marion worked for more than ten years in civic peace-building and post-conflict stabilization, including five years of fieldwork in the South Caucasus. She is an alumna of the Fulbright foreign students program in the United States and was awarded the P.E.O. International Peace Scholarship in 2020/2021.

Dana M. Johnson

Status: Ph.D. Candidate Education: MPAff University of Texas at Austin, BA in Sociology and Social Work University of MinnesotaInterests: Sexual and reproductive health, social policy, fertility, population health                
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Chair: Dr. Abigail Aiken                
Bio: I am Ph.D. candidate in Public Policy and a fellow at the University of Texas Population Research Center. My research focuses on changing public policy to make abortion care more accessible, affordable, and acceptable in the United States. I use a mixed-methods approach to analyze in-depth interview data, survey data, and online data on the safety and effectiveness of medication abortion. Prior to graduate school, I was a grassroots organizer for a reproductive rights organization in the upper Midwest. I grew up in Wisconsin, received my BA in Sociology and Social Work from the University of Minnesota, and got my Master's in Public Affairs at the University of Texas. My work has appeared in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the American Journal of Public Health, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, among other places. My research has been supported by the Society of Family Planning's Emerging Scholars in Family Planning Research Fund, the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, and the Population Reference Bureau. I am also a researcher for Project SANA, an interdisciplinary research group at the University of Texas. We examine the intricacies of self-managed abortion (SMA), or abortion conducted outside of the formal healthcare setting. Project SANA's research has been used as evidence challenging many restrictive abortion policies, including the 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution, and the U.S. Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

Jasleen Kaur

Status: Ph.D. student                
Education: Bachelor's, Economics (Hons); Master's, Applied Economics                
Interests: Monitoring and evaluation; implementation science; global development; gender; social policy                
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Bio: Jasleen Kaur is a third-year Ph.D. student at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. She is a development economist and her research aims to improve the social, economic and political status of women. She is specifically interested in the "implementation science" of policies and programs meant to empower women. Kaur has previously worked with J-PAL South Asia, where she was involved with hands-on monitoring and evaluation of a gender livelihood and training program on women's social and political outcomes. She also worked as a senior researcher at Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University in India, where she worked on evaluating a conditional cash transfer program for first-time pregnant women. 

Stephanie Leutert

Status: Ph.D. student                
Education: B.A. International Affairs and Spanish Literature, Skidmore College; M.A. Global Affairs, Yale University                
Interests: Migration Policy; Border Policy                
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Bio: Stephanie Leutert is a Ph.D. student at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and Director of the Central America and Mexico Policy Initiative at the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law. Her research interests focus on U.S. migration and border policy, Mexican migration policy and the U.S.-Mexico border. Previously, Leutert has worked as a senior advisor for migration policy at the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration and as a research associate in the Latin America Studies Program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Kate McArdle

Status: Ph.D. Student                
Education: BSE in Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, 2007; MSE in Software Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, 2014                
Interests: US democracy, access to political power, democratic representation                
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Bio: Kate McArdle's research focuses on improving equitable access to political power and democratic representation in the United States, with an eye toward alleviating systemic injustices in our democratic institutions. Prior to LBJ, she led data scienceat Blue Squad, where she built software that used national voter records and elections data to empower people to become more civically and politically engaged. Although she has a background in machine learning, she is equally interested in both quantitative and qualitative methods

Sophie M. Morse

Status: Doctoral Candidate                
Education: BA-International Studies, Middlebury College; MPP-Public Public Policy, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health                
Interests: Policy scholar working in public health spaces, interested in improving health services for women, strengthening health systems, and preventing and responding to violence against women.                
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Committee Chair: Dr. Erin Lentz, Dr. Victoria Rodriguez                
Bio: Sophie received her Bachelor's degree in International Studies from Middlebury College and her Master's in Public Policy from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Previously, she served in the Peace Corps in Uganda and was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student to Colombia to study the response to sexual violence in the health system. As a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, Sophie is building on prior research, studying barriers to the implementation of policies that address violence against women in Mexico, specifically focusing on the health system's role in providing care. Last year, as a Fulbright DDRA recipient, she conducted 85 interviews in Mexico City with policymakers and providers. Currently, she is a Visiting Fellow at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at UCSD.                
In addition to her research, Sophie has also volunteered for over five years accompanying sexual assault survivors at two non-profits and consulted for the Pan American Health Organization. In her free time, she enjoys baking, gardening, and hiking with her dog and partner.

Eloy Oliveira

Status: Ph.D. Student                
Education: MPA at Columbia University, Bachelor of Laws at UFMG                
Interests: Public Management and Public Administration                
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Bio: Eloy Oliveira is a Ph.D. student at the LBJ School and a Brumley Senior Fellow at the Strauss Center for International Security and Law. His research interests revolve around public administration and public management, especially focused on understanding the drivers that determine government effectiveness. He holds a Master's degree in Public Administration from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Law degree from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Brazil. Before joining the LBJ School, Eloy led Republica.org, a Brazilian think-and-do-tank focused on using data to improve the motivation, responsiveness, and effectiveness of people working in government in Brazil. Since its inception in 2016, Republica.org has led and co-funded over 150 different projects, sparking real change in Brazilian public policy. Prior to Republica.org, Eloy was engaged in public service, working at the Minas Gerais State Government in Brazil, where he led projects related to Public-Private Partnerships. He regularly writes to newspapers in Brazil about best practices in public management and public policies.

Joycelyn Ovalle

Status: Ph.D. student                
Education: B.A., Political Science, Sam Houston State University; Master of Public Administration (MPA), The Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University                
Interests: Civil society; public policy; power dynamics                
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Bio: Joycelyn Ovalle is a doctoral student at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Her research interests focus on the intersection between public policy and civil society with a strong orientation toward better understanding philanthropy's increasing role in policymaking. Prior to pursuing doctoral studies, Ovalle managed projects and conducted research at the Urban Institute's Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy. Before joining Urban, Ovalle also held positions as a graduate research assistant at Texas A&M University and in the public sector at the U.S. Department of Energy. She holds a B.A. in political science from Sam Houston State University and an MPA from Texas A&M University. 

Sandeep Paul

Status: Ph.D. student -4th Year                
Education: M.A. in Development Studies from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, and B.A. (Hons.) in Economics from Hans Raj College, Delhi University.                
Interests: My Ph.D. dissertation research explores the role of science-policy interfaces and policy communities in climate policy process in Indian cities. Broader research interests include climate change policy, environmental governance, disaster preparedness, and urban development.                
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Committee Chair: Dr. Catherine Weaver and Dr. Patrick Bixler                
Bio: Sandeep Paul is a doctoral student at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. His broader research interests include climate change policy, environmental governance, disaster preparedness, and urban development. His dissertation research explores the role of science-policy interfaces and policy communities in the climate policy process in Indian cities. He is also associated with Planet Texas-2050 and Austin Area Sustainability Indicators projects at The University of Texas at Austin. Before joining the LBJ School, Paul was a research associate at Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), New Delhi, India. He holds an M.A. in Development Studies from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, and a B.A. (Hons.) in Economics from Hans Raj College, Delhi University.

Rachel L. Reynolds

Status: Ph.D. Candidate                
Education: Bachelor of Science in Materials Science & Biochemistry, US Air Force AcademyMaster of Arts in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, the University of Colorado at Boulder Master of Science & Technology Intelligence with a concentration in Cyber Intelligence & Data Analytics, National Intelligence UniversityMaster of Philosophy in Military Strategy, School of Advanced Air and Space Studies                
Interests: Military strategy, Civil/military affairs, Organizational culture, Technological innovation                
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Committee Chair: Dr. Jeremi Suri                
Bio: Rachel Reynolds grew up in Houston, Texas. Their research interests include national security policy, military technology, strategy, organizational culture, and ethics. They focus on cultural barriers to organizations' technological adaptation. Specifically, they investigate instances of labor pool expansion's phenomenon whereby knowledge monopolies erode, causing diffusion of specialists' power and authority in the US Air Force. An active duty lieutenant colonel in the US Air Force, Rachel has served in tactical communications, cyber, intelligence, nuclear surety, and education & training roles throughout the country and abroad. They hold degrees in materials science, ecology and evolutionary biology, national intelligence, and military strategy. Upon completion of the LBJ Ph.D. program, Rachel will return to an operational leadership position and is projected to become a future faculty member at the Air Force's School of Advanced Air and Space Studies. Rachel lives with their spouse, Mack, in Austin, where they like to hike, camp, cook, attend live theatre, and rockhound.

Sam Rosenberg

Status: Ph.D. Student                
Education: B.S. in American Politics from West Point, M.A. in National Security Policy from Georgetown University                
Interests: Military strategy, national security policy, security force assistance                 
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Committee Chair: Dr. Jeremi Suri               
Bio: Sam Rosenberg (@SamR2508) is a PhD student at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, serving as a Goodpaster Scholar through the Army’s Advanced Strategic Planning and Policy Program. His dissertation research focuses on US efforts to build partner militaries for large-scale combat. Sam is an active-duty Army officer, serving most recently with United States Northern Command on the commander’s initiatives group and within the strategy and policy directorate. He commissioned in 2006 as an infantry officer and served in a variety of leadership positions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, and Eastern Europe. In addition to his military duties, Sam is a member of a DOD Minerva-funded research team studying foreign military training in Europe. He is also a member of the editorial team at the Irregular Warfare Initiative and a graduate fellow at the Clements Center for National Security. Sam holds a bachelor’s degree in American politics from West Point and a master’s degree in national security policy from Georgetown University, where he studied as a Downing Scholar.

Vivek S. Shastry

Status: Ph.D. Candidate                
Education: M.S., Community and Regional Planning and M.S., Sustainable Design, University of Texas at Austin, USA; B.Tech Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology Karnataka, India                
Interests: Energy Policy, Environmental Justice, Climate Adaptation, International Development, Data Science and Machine Learning                
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Committee Chair: Dr. Varun Rai                
Bio: Vivek Shastry is an interdisciplinary policy researcher specializing in energy policy and environmental justice. Vivek is passionate about facilitating inclusive rural development through sustainable energy solutions. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in public policy at the University of Texas at Austin, LBJ School of Public Affairs. Vivek's research to date has contributed to the literature on global energy poverty, U.S. energy transition, and the distributional equity of policy choices. His co-authored works have been published in diverse journals including Energy Research & Social Science, PLOS One, Indoor and Build Environment, and Healthcare for Women International. His doctoral work explores the intersection of energy access, primary health care and rural livelihoods. Prior to his doctoral work, he traveled extensively in rural India and worked at both the policy level and implementation of decentralized clean energy projects.

Antonia Vazquez

Status: PhD Student                
Education: B.A. in Business Administration, UNICEN, Argentina; M.A. in Economics, Universidad de San Andres, Argentina                
Interests: Development economics; labor economics; social policy evaluation                
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Bio: Antonia Vazquez's research interests focus on development economics, labor economics, and social policy evaluation in Latin American countries. Before coming to the LBJ School, she was a Fox International Fellow at Yale University. There she studied the effects of military conscription on personality and beliefs in Argentina, as well as the effects of public information disclosure on the performance of public infrastructure projects in Costa Rica. Vazquez holds an M.A. in economics from Universidad de San Andres (Argentina) and a B.A. in Business Administration from UNICEN (Argentina).

Kayee (Jiayi) Zhou

Status: Ph.D. student                
Education: B.A., Political Science, Sun Yat-sen University; MPA, M.A. in Political Science, Texas Tech University                
Interests: Ethnic politics (particularly Asian American political attitudes and behavior); immigration policy; politics and public policy in China                
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Bio: Kayee Zhou, from Guangdong, China, is a doctoral student and a research assistant of the Child and Family Research Partnership (CFRP) at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Her current research interests focus on uncovering Asian Americans' political attitudes and behavior by exploring the dynamics of their multiple identities. She is also using R to perform machine learning for text analysis on policy documents to identify the shift of political focus. During her undergraduate study in China, she was actively engaged in starting up two nongovernmental organizations, one centering on local culture and historic preservation and the other one on bridging social work scholars with social work organizations. She holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Sun Yat-sen University, China, an M.A. in public administration, and an M.A. in political science from Texas Tech University.