Team directory
Team directory
Michelle Venetucci, ISPS Graduate Policy Fellow 2025
Michelle Venetucci is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology, with an emphasis on economic anthropology. Her dissertation explores social and structural conditions that shape corporate environments in Silicon Valley, working at the intersection of speculative finance, middle class domesticity, and new technologies. As an ISPS fellow, she will study the regulatory landscape that creates favorable conditions for private equity and venture capital in the U.S., tracing the emergence of specific financial tools and analyzing their relationship to corporate expansion.
Nisheeth Vishnoi, A. Bartlett Giamatti Professor of Computer Science
Professor Nisheeth Vishnoi’s research spans several areas of theoretical computer science: from approximability of NP-hard problems, to combinatorial, convex and non-convex optimization, to tackling algorithmic questions involving dynamical systems, stochastic processes, and polynomials.
Jacob Wallace, Assistant Professor of Public Health (Health Policy)
Jacob Wallace is an Assistant Professor of Public Health (Health Policy) at the Yale School of Public Health whose primary research interest is Medicaid. He is a health economist by training and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University. Prior to that he worked as a policy analyst for the New York State Department of Health in the Office of Health Insurance Programs for three years. His research is focused on the economics of the Medicaid program, with a particular focus on the impact of managed care.
Klaudia Wegschaider, External Postdoctoral Associate (University of Vienna)
Klaudia Wegschaider is an external fellow at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University as well as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Government at the University of Vienna. Her work focuses on the causes and consequences of electoral reforms, especially enfranchisement. Methodologically, she is primarily a qualitative researcher, combining case studies with quantitative and experimental methods. Her work has been published in Comparative Political Studies, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and other outlets.
Keith Whittington, David Boies Professor of Law
Keith E. Whittington is the David Boies Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Whittington’s teaching and scholarship span American constitutional theory, American political and constitutional history, judicial politics, the presidency, and free speech and the law. He is the author of You Can’t Teach That!
Steven Wilkinson, Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies and Professor of Political Science and International Affairs
Steven I. Wilkinson (Ph.D., MIT) is dean of Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He is the Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies and professor of political science and international affairs at Yale University. Prior to taking up the FAS dean position in January 2025 he served as Henry R.
Kira Wishart, Senior Administrative Assistant
Office Location: 77 Prospect Street
Email: kira.wishart@yale.edu
Fanmei Xia, ISPS Graduate Policy Fellow 2025
Fanmei Xia is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Yale University. Her research interests are in reproduction, migration, and education. For her current project, she is focused on people’s reproductive decisions and the choice/intention of not having children. She employs multi-methods across different projects. Prior to Yale, she had a background in psychology, public policy, and economics.
Reza Yaesoubi, Associate Professor of Public Health (Health Policy)
Dr. Yaesoubi’s research focuses on medial decision making and model-based evaluation of health policies. His work incorporates mathematical and computer simulation models, machine learning methods, and optimization techniques to guide resource allocation and decision making in public health and health delivery systems.