Grad Student Highlights from Our Ph . D . and MEECON Programs
Kirill Evdokimov Awarded Lodieska Stockbridge Vaughn Fellowship
Kirill Evdokimov , a sixth-year Ph . D . student , is the recipient of a Lodieska Stockbridge Vaughn Fellowship for 2020-2021 . This university-level award is given to only five Rice graduate students each year and honors students who have demonstrated outstanding achievement and promise .
Kirill studies theoretical models of collective decision-making , focusing on bargaining procedures , legislative institutions , and voting . He examines the effects of decision-making procedures on the equality and efficiency of decisions made in committees and other small groups . When group members differ in their ability to contribute to the joint product of their cooperation , the procedures used to make decisions have a tangible effect on whether the group members are compensated in accordance with their ability or equally despite the differences in their contributions . Kirill shows that more inclusive decision rules promote equality but lead to outcomes that are less reflective of the abilities of group members .
Kirill is also interested in the power of voting institutions to aggregate the private knowledge of voters about the effects of policies and in describing the benefits of coordination among voters when policy proposals are made by politicians with selfish motives . When many voters act individually but share the same goals , they give a tremendous amount of control to the politician in eliciting their private knowledge . Cooperation through information sharing and organizing voting blocs allows voters to partially or completely break this control , especially when voters align themselves with two voting blocs with conflicting goals .
Kirill has recently published articles in Economics Letters and the Annual Review of Economics .
MEECON Graduates Land Jobs at Amazon and Other Top Companies
The MEECON program faculty and staff were recently excited to hear that Sid Battacharya (’ 18 ) has taken on the role of Worldwide Head of Energy Solutions at Amazon . Sid worked with Accenture AI during his time in the MEECON program and continued as a Digital Innovation Strategist in their Houston Innovation Hub before becoming Director of Oil and Gas at Darcy Partners , an energy industry technology scouting and innovation advisory firm .
Other recent stars of the program who have kept us informed of their progress include Valentina Izquierdo (’ 19 ) who started at Genscape in Houston as a summer intern and was then hired by them to be an Energy Equity Analyst . Genscape was later acquired by Wood Mackenzie , and this past summer Valentina became Senior Research Analyst for Latin America Solar at Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables in Mexico City .
Anna Temple (’ 17 ) was working at Wood Mackenzie while completing her MEECON degree . After graduation , she moved to Singapore as their Director of Asia Pacific Downstream Consulting . Now she is working at Shell in Singapore as a Senior Strategy Consultant .
Travis Wilson (’ 16 ) is the Executive VP of Operations at Marea Energy Partners where he is also responsible for EPC ( engineering , procurement and construction ) negotiations , economic analysis , and corporate strategy .
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