Team directory

Harsh Parikh, Assistant Professor, Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health

Harsh Parikh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the Yale School of Public Health. He leads the Causal Evidence and Decisions Studio (CEADS), developing machine learning-aided causal inference approaches for high-stakes decision-making in complex environments. His research focuses on creating rigorous tools for estimating heterogeneous treatment effects, trustworthy methods that allow domain experts to validate causal assumptions, and domain-conscious approaches that bridge theory and practice.

Limor Peer, Associate Director for Research & Strategic Initiatives

Office Location: 24 Hillhouse Avenue
Phone: 203-432-0054
Email: limor.peer@yale.edu

Theophile Penigaud, External Postdoctoral Associate (Sciences Po, Paris)

Théophile Pénigaud is an external postdoctoral fellow at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS) at Yale University. Before joining Yale University in July 2023, Dr. Pénigaud earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon (France). His research focuses on democratic theory, with a particular interest in deliberative democracy, democratic innovations, political epistemology, and the political philosophy of AI.

Area of study: governance and democratic process

Danielle Petrafesa, Financial Assistant

Address: 24 Hillhouse Avenue
Phone: 203-432-9736
Email: danielle.petrafesa@yale.edu;

Benjamin Polak, William C Brainard Professor of Economics; Professor of Management

Professor Polak is an expert on decision theory, game theory, and economic history. His work explores economic agents whose goals are richer than those captured in traditional models. His work on game theory ranges from foundational theoretical work on common knowledge, to applied topics in corporate finance and law and economics. Most recently, he has made contributions to the theory of repeated games with asymmetric information. Other research interests include economic inequality and individuals’ responses to uncertainty.

Shirin Purkayastha, ISPS Graduate Policy Fellow, 2026

Shirin Purkayastha is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Departments of Black Studies and Sociology. Her research examines the consequences of financialization for the popular music industry. She is currently researching how firm-level changes following the Telecommunications Act of 1996 shaped the discursive labor of hip-hop journalism.

As an ISPS Fellow, she will examine how platform economies organize the work and subjectivities of cultural workers. Prior to Yale, she worked as a policy researcher at UCSF and the Vera Institute of Justice.

Eli Rau, Postdoctoral Associate

Eli Rau is a postdoctoral associate with the Democratic Innovations program at ISPS and the Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy. His primary areas of research include comparative electoral institutions, voter turnout, and democratic erosion. In current research projects, he examines the link between economic inequality and democratic erosion; whether compulsory voting is good for democracy; and how norms of reciprocity can enable democratic erosion even in the absence of strong partisanship.

Shir Raviv, External Postdoctoral Associate (Columbia University)

Shir Raviv is a political scientist who studies the politics of using AI in public policy implementation. She employs experimental methods to investigate how citizens perceive and react to the use of data-driven algorithms in high-stakes domains such as criminal justice, policing, welfare, and education. She also examines how their views change after receiving information or having personal experience with the technology. Before joining Columbia University in September 2023, Dr. Raviv earned her Ph.D. and M.A.

Jordyn Ricard, ISPS Graduate Policy Fellow, 2026

Jordyn R. Ricard is a PhD Candidate in Clinical Psychology. Her research examines how exposure to community violence shapes mental health outcomes. She also examines how structural interventions can mitigate the negative effects of community violence, with the goal of promoting safer communities, improving well-being, and reducing pathways into the legal system. As an ISPS Fellow, she is investigating how psychological adaptations to community and structural threat interact to confer risk for mental health problems. Prior to Yale, she earned her B.S.

Jennifer Richeson, Philip R. Allen Professor of Psychology

Jennifer Richeson is the Philip R. Allen Professor of Psychology and a faculty fellow with ISPS. Her research examines multiple psychological phenomena related to cultural diversity. For instance, she examines how people experience racial and other forms of societal diversity, be it efforts to navigate one-on-one interracial interactions or the political consequences of the increasing racial/ethnic diversity of the United States.