O'Brien-Udry Lab

The lab explores questions related to foreign aid, climate change, and international political economy. Currently, team members are digitizing historical World Bank documents to create a database of all proposed projects from 1955 to 2022. Tasks include: systemic digitization of documents, cleaning and merging existing data, historical research on selected aid projects, and network analyses of associated bureaucrats. The project aims to use the full sample of projects to understand key selection issues in aid.

UIUC students interested in joining the lab should fill out this form.

Our 2025/6 lab manager is Ping Meunprasittiveg.

Current Lab members

Ani Apresyan

Sia Bhutani

Ishita Chaurasia

Ben Conway

Grace Farrar

Kevin Jaime-Villagomez

Ananya Kavatekar

Ping Meunprasittiveg

Eshal Mirza

Nitya Nair

Enrique Padilla

Sankirtana Ravichandran

Ishani Sahu

Kayla Sanchez

Dev Shah

Shlok Shah

Dexter Skobel

Martha Sulzen

Hannah Sundararajan

Steven Tobia

Connor Waddell

Kris Wu

Alumni

Sophia Teresa Alvarez

Aleeha Javed Chughtai

Wencheng Huangfu

Jonathan Kroeze

Vedika Amit Shah