Team directory

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.

Xiao Xu, Associate Professor of Medicine (Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences)

Dr. Xiao Xu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at Yale School of Medicine, and a faculty member of Yale Cancer Center and Yale Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy and Effectiveness Research Center (COPPER). As a health economist and health services researcher, her work seeks to promote the delivery of high-quality and high-value care. Her research focuses on examining and identifying factors that influence the quality, outcomes, and value of care, with a focus on women’s health care.

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.

Itamar Yakir, Postdoctoral Associate

Itamar Yakir is a postdoctoral sssociate with the Democratic Innovations program at Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies and with Yale’s Identity and Conflict Lab. He received his Ph.D. in Public Policy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2023.

Milly Yang, ISPS Graduate Policy Fellow 2025

Milly Yang is a PhD Candidate in the department of Sociology. Her research interests are in immigration, family, and social inequality. As an ISPS fellow, Milly will be examining high-skilled immigration in the U.S., particularly how immigration policies shape labor market experiences, legal membership, and the retention of high-skilled immigrants (e.g., H-1B visa holders) in the United States.

Jiwon Yun, ISPS Graduate Policy Fellow 2025

Jiwon Yun is a PhD candidate in Sociology. His research interests are in race, ethnicity, migration, and organizational diversity. His dissertation explores the question of how we can bring marginalized populations to sectors that have historically been inaccessible to them, using the field of classical music as an example. To answer this question, he is currently conducting an ethnography of a nonprofit that provides a free music program to students from low-income, racial minority families in New England.

Emma Zang, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Biostatistics

Emma Zang’s research interests lie at the intersection of health and aging, marriage and family, and inequality. Her work aims to improve the understanding of 1) how early-life conditions affect later-life health outcomes; 2) social stratification and health; 3) spillover effects within the household exploiting policy changes.

Harrison Zhou, Henry Ford II Professor of Statistics & Data Science

Harrison Zhou, newly named as the Henry Ford II Professor of Statistics and Data Science, conducts his research on asymptotic decision theory, high dimensional statistics, large covariance matrices estimation, Bayesian nonparametrics, and network analysis.