Chang Cai

Ph.D. Student – Department of Agricultural & Consumer Economics
Period in REAL: Jan 2016 – 2021
E-mail: ccai5@illinois.edu

Chang Cai is currently a first-year Ph.D student in Agricultural and Consumer Economics at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She holds a M.S. degree in Economics from the same university. Her research interests are applied econometrics, International trade and regional economy development. She is now working on evaluating the socioeconomic impacts of climate uncertainty.

Chang Lu

Ph.D. Student – Department of Economics
Period in REAL: May 2019 – 2021
E-mail: changlu4@illinois.edu

Chang holds a B.S. in Finance from Peking University and two masters-M.Sc. in Economics and M.Sc. in Statistics from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is currently a Ph.D. student in Economic department of UIUC. Her research interests include theoretical Econometrics and Regional Economics, particularly Quantile Regression, Spatial Econometrics and high-dimensional Econometrics.

Federico Ceballos Sierra

Ph.D. Student – Department of Agricultural & Consumer Economics
Period in REAL: Jan 2017 – 2021
E-mail: fc3@illinois.edu

My main research fields are Regional and Development Economics: studying how coffee can be used as a development tool. Specifically, I am interested in (1) studying the effect of climate change in coffee yields, and how that is reshaping Colombia’s coffee producing region, and (2) the process of technology diffusion through informal channels of information and how this can be used to leverage the efficiency of extension services. I am a 1st year PhD student at the ACE Department.

Ivan Andres Flores Caceres

M.S. Student – Department of Agricultural & Consumer Economics
Period in REAL: Aug 2018 – 2021
E-mail: ivanaf2@illinois.edu

Ivan has a Bachelor’s degree in Business and Administration. During his professional intership at CEPR, he geocoded the chilean register of educational institutions to build an Web application with the processed data (http://cepr.uai.cl/buscador-ies/). Currently, he and Dr. Esteban Lopez are working on commuting and gender using Chilean data. His fields of interests are Regional Economics, Education Economics and Childhood development and Health.

Jhorland Ayala García

Ph.D. Student – Department of Agricultural & Consumer Economics
Period in REAL: Aug 2017 – 2021
E-mail: ja8@illinois.edu

Jhorland is a PhD student in the Department of Agricultural & Consumer Economics. His research interests include Regional Economics and Development. He has been working in the Regional Economics Studies Center of the Central Bank of Colombia since 2013.

Karelys Katina Guzman Finol

Ph.D. Student – Department of Agricultural & Consumer Economics
Period in REAL: Aug 2016 – 2021
E-mail: kkg2@illinois.edu

Karelys started the PhD program in ACE in fall 2016. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Antioquia (Medellín, Colombia) and a master’s in Economics from the University of the Rosario (Bogotá, Colombia). Since 2012, she has worked in the Regional Economics Studies Center of the Colombian Central Bank. Her research interests are: regional economics, health economics, development, and poverty.

Noé J Nava

Ph.D. Student – Department of Agricultural & Consumer Economics
Period in REAL: Jun 2018 – 2021
E-mail: noejn2@illinois.edu

Noé J Nava is a graduate student of applied economics at the University of Illinois. Noé does research in the areas of development economics, environmental and resource economics, and labor economics: market accessibility; food security; land, forest and water management; farm workers and migration; and issues of inequality. Quantitative Methods: Input-output, spatial econometrics, panel data and other techniques for policy impact evaluation.

Rocio Valdebenito

Ph.D. Student – Department of Agricultural & Consumer Economics
Period in REAL: Jan 2015 – Mar 2015 (VS); Aug 2018 – 2021 (PhD)
E-mail: riv2@illinois.edu

Rocio Valdebenito is currently Second-year Ph.D. student in Agricultural and Applied Economics. She was a visiting scholar at REAL for two months in 2015 and since that, she has worked in the Center of Economics and Regional Policy of The Adolfo Ibáñez University (Viña del Mar, Chile). Her research interests include Economics of Education and Regional Economics.

Youngwook Jung

Ph.D. Student – Department of Economics
Period in REAL: Jun 2019 – 2021
E-mail: yj10@illinois.edu

Youngwook is a PhD student in the Department of Economics. He holds a BA and a MA in Economics from Sungkyunkwan University, Korea. His research interests include Regional Economics, Labor economics, and Public economics.