Research Professional – Fiona Burlig, Erin Kelley, Greg Lane (Full-Time, Benefits Eligible)

Job Title: Research Professional (RP) 

Location: Chicago, IL 

Salary Ranges: $55,000–62,000 annual salary, additional $2,000 professional development fund. The included pay rate or range represents the University’s good faith estimate of the possible compensation offer for this role at the time of posting.

Terms: Seeking a Research Professional for a period of at least one but ideally two years 

Projects: The Research Professional will be collaborating with faculty on one main project, and provide additional support on a second.

Expected Start Date: July 1, 2026

Benefits Eligible: Yes. The University of Chicago offers a wide range of benefits programs and resources for eligible employees, including health, retirement, and paid time off. Information about the benefit offerings can be found in the Benefits Guidebook.

Department: Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago
 

Job Summary 

The Energy Policy Institute (EPIC) is seeking to hire a full-time Research Professional to work with Professors Erin Kelley, Greg Lane, and Fiona Burlig on ongoing and new research projects (listed below). The Research Professional’s responsibilities will span all stages of research, including collecting data of in both tabular and spatial formats, developing algorithms that clean and organize data, conducting statistical analyses, running simulations, and preparing manuscripts and presentations. Applicants must have completed a Bachelors degree by June 2026 and available to begin work in Summer 2026. Note, throughout this role, the projects and assignments are subject to change in line with the PIs’ research agendas.

Seeds of (climate) change: Private adaptation and subsidized insurance in West Bengal: Adaptation is required to cope with climate change. Theory predicts that agricultural insurance, which protects farmers against climate damages, and enjoys billions of subsidy dollars, may either increase or decrease private adaptation. Subsidized insurance may crowd in adaptation by limiting farmers’ risks from experimenting with new technologies. However, it may instead crowd out adaptation, by insulating farmers against climate risk. We test which of these effects dominates with an RCT in West Bengal, India. We randomize 300 villages into a control group and index insurance arms, where farmers receive payouts if floods occur. We estimate the impact of insurance on farmer willingness-to-pay for both flood-tolerant and high-yield-variety seeds, providing a direct test of the impacts of insurance on demand for adaptation. We also induce random variation in seed take-up, in order to estimate the effects of specialty seeds, insurance, and their interaction on agricultural inputs and ex post welfare outcomes.

The value of forecasts: Experimental evidence from developing-country agriculture: Climate risk is a key driver of low agricultural productivity in poor countries. We use a cluster-randomized trial to evaluate a novel risk-mitigation approach: long-range forecasts that provide information about the onset of the Indian summer monsoon well in advance of its arrival. In contrast to traditional ex post risk coping approaches, this novel ex ante technology provides accurate information significantly before the monsoon’s arrival, enabling farmers to alter major up front input decisions. Moreover, forecasts have the potential to be disseminated cheaply, even at scale. We assign 250 villages to one of three groups: a control group; a group that receives an opportunity to purchase the forecast; and a group that is offered insurance. This design allows us to investigate farmers’ willingness-to-pay for forecasts; how forecasts affect farmer beliefs, up-front investments, and welfare; and benchmark these effects against the canonical ex post loss mitigation tool: index insurance.

The program is intended to serve as a bridge between college and graduate school for students interested in empirical economics. Applicants must have strong quantitative and programming skills. Candidates with research experience are strongly preferred, especially those with experience in Stata, R, Python or Matlab. The ideal candidate would work for EPIC for one or two years before applying to graduate school in Economics or another quantitative social science. EPIC offers competitive salary and employee benefits. 

Unit-Specific Responsibilities

Data Collection

• Support survey design: participate in questionnaire design and brainstorming with PIs about the best way to capture the impacts of interest.
• Support primary data collection: program electronic questionnaires, design and run high frequency quality checks on raw data; liaise with field staff to resolve data issues and required clarifications

Data Analysis   

• Clean administrative and primary datasets and create all indicators required for analysis
• Write well-documented, reproducible code for data cleaning, descriptive statistics, regression analysis, data visualization, and any other analysis as per project needs; document all data work on the project’s GitHub repository
• Prepare push-button replication files academic papers and related outputs
• Manage databases, integrating various data sources (for example, project monitoring data, administrative data from local government, and household survey data). This may require programming matching algorithms, using spatial data to create linkages, performing manual matching, and linking up with field staff for additional information on specific tasks.

Preparing Policy Reports

• Conduct literature review and syntheses, contribute to impact evaluation reports and policy briefs, support the development of grant applications, and other writing and editing tasks
• Work alongside PIs to disseminate these reports

Unit-preferred Competencies

• Excellent data and data visualization is required.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills required.
• Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously and meet tight deadlines required.
• Excellent organizational skills and attention to detail required.
• Ability to work both independently and as a team member required.

Preferred Qualifications:

Education

• Bachelor's degree in economics, computer sciences, math, or related STEM field (required).
• Master degree in Economics, Public Policy, Computer Science or related field (preferred).

Experience

• Relevant research experience, especially with data, preferred

Technical Knowledge/Skills

• Knowledge of R/Stata required
• Knowledge of SurveyCTO required
• Knowledge of LaTeX preferred 

Application Documents

• Resume/CV (required)
• Cover Letter (required)
• Writing Sample (required)
• Transcripts (unofficial is acceptable) (required)
• Two Professional References (required)

About the Department  

The Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), part of the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth (ICSG) produces data-driven research that advances society's understanding of the global energy challenge and translates research insights into real-world impacts through strategic outreach and training for the next generation of global energy leaders. EPIC’s pre-doctoral fellowship program, part of the Becker Friedman Institute's Pre-Doctoral in Economics Program (PREP), serves as a two-year bridge program between college and a doctoral program.  Recipients gain an in-depth understanding of the entire research process while undergoing intensive career development as part of a close-knit community

The University of Chicago is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or expression, national or ethnic origin, shared ancestry, age, status as an individual with a disability, military or veteran status, genetic information, or other protected classes under the law. For additional information please see the University’s Notice of Nondiscrimination.

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