Meet the Research Assistants

Our Research Assistants (RAs) come from diverse academic and professional backgrounds.

Below are profiles of some current RAs. For more information, see the Research Assistants Program brochure

Tamás Briglevics works with Scott Schuh, senior economist and director of the Consumer Payments Research Center. Originally from Hungary, Tamás is working towards his PhD in Economics at Boston College. His research interests are monetary economics and banking.

Lynn Conell-Price works with senior economist Julian Jamison and economist Anat Bracha in the research department’s Center for Behavioral Economics. Originally from Palo Alto, California, Lynn graduated from Swarthmore College in 2010 with a BA in economics. Her undergraduate studies focused on behavioral economics and the psychology of decisionmaking; her work at the Bank is related to these fields. Lynn’s current research projects involve data on decisionmaking from field experiments in Uganda and from lab experiments which she helped to conduct at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Decision Science Lab.

David Coyne works in the New England Public Policy Center housed in the research department. A Massachusetts native, he graduated from Tufts University in 2010 with a BS in quantitative economics. His research interests include public finance, education finance and policy, wage and labor markets, and economic growth. His work at the Bank has focused widely on state and local fiscal policy, especially policy related to municipal aid reform.

Julia Dennett works in the research department’s New England Public Policy Center (NEPPC). Originally from Colorado, she graduated in 2008 with a BS in economics and a minor in public policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Julia’s research interests include public finance, labor economics, and political economy. At the Boston Fed her recent work has focused on regional labor market issues, specifically the potential mismatch between the supply of and demand for skilled workers, as well as the impact of housing market conditions on migration and the labor market. Prior to joining the NEPPC, Julia worked in the Research group at the New York Fed.

Tal Elmatad works in the research department’s New England Public Policy Center (NEPPC). Originally from New Jersey, Tal received his BA from Rutgers College with a double major in economics and political science and a minor in mathematics. For the NEPPC his research includes various topics relating to the status and future of New England. Tal’s wider research interests include public policy, law and economics, and environmental economics. His favorite thing about working as a research assistant is the continuous exposure to different topics and projects that engage a wide array of skills.

Jamie Fogel works with vice president and economist Bob Triest. Raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan he graduated from the University of Michigan in 2011 with a BS in economics and minors in math and history. His projects at the Bank include studying the long-run labor market effects of the Great Recession, the effect of foreclosures on student academic performance, helping assemble the beige book, and occasionally preparing policy memos.

Kate Fritzsche works with Geoffrey Tootell, director of research. Originally from southern Maine, she graduated in 2010 with a ScB in applied mathematics-economics from Brown University. Kate’s research focuses on topics related to monetary policy, including inflation, growth forecasts, and wages. Her recent projects have included studies of wage rigidity in a low-inflation environment using micro-data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and work on the pass-through of oil and commodities prices into inflation and wage growth. Kate regularly assists with the preparation of policy memos for pre-FOMC meetings.

Vikram Jambulapati works with senior economist and policy advisor Joanna Stavins and is a member of the Consumer Payments Research Center. Raised in southwestern Georgia, Vikram graduated from the University of Chicago in 2009 with a BA in economics. Immediately afterwards Vikram worked for Innovations for Poverty Action and the Azim Premji Foundation by conducting research on rural education in Andhra Pradesh, India. At the Boston Fed, Vikram researches trends in consumer payment behavior, the impact of the Credit CARD Act, and assists in the compilation of the Beige Book.

Ryan Kessler works with senior economist and policy advisor Katharine Bradbury. Originally from Chicago, Illinois, he graduated in 2010 with a BA in economics and minor in mathematics from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. At the Boston Fed, Ryan’s work involves evaluating trends in U.S. family income mobility, working on projects related to the New England regional economy for policy meetings, and helping assemble the Beige Book.

Zack Kimball works with senior economist and policy advisor Paul Willen. Raised in the Boston suburbs, Zack graduated in 2010 with a BA in economics and political science from the University of Rochester, where he focused on positive methodologies such as game theory and formal modeling. At the Boston Fed, Zack’s focus is on mortgages—he works with credit and real estate data sets to trace the development of lending, refinancing, and foreclosures over the last decade, placing particular emphasis on the post–2005 housing crisis. From time to time, Zack also prepares policy-related briefings on the New England economy. He joined the Federal Reserve on deferral from law school, where he will study in law and economics after his completing his tenure as a research assistant.

Tram Nguyen works with vice president and economist Giovanni Olivei. Born and raised in Vietnam, she graduated in 2010 with a BS in economics and mathematics from Bates College. Tram’s current project at the bank studies the effects of monetary shocks on various macroeconomic indicators and price indices. Her other work includes examining down-ward nominal wage flexibility using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and she occasionally works on policy memos and briefings.

Rich Ryan, a LaTeX devotee and guru at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, works with senior economist and policy advisor Christopher L. Foote. Together they currently work on issues related to the recent rise in unemployment duration and a consistent estimation of standard errors in panel data. Rich earned a BS in economics and mathematics and an MS in environmental and natural resource economics from the University of Rhode Island.

Lily Shen works with senior economist and policy advisor Michelle Barnes. Originally from Shanghai, China, she graduated in 2011 with a BSE in Operations Research and Financial Engineering from Princeton University. In addition to regular policy-related work for pre-FOMC meetings, her current projects invole investigating term structure models, replicating permanent income models, and evaluating the impact of Great Recession on firms' cash flow.

Henok Tewolde works with executive vice president and senior policy advisor Jeff Fuhrer and senior economist Fabià Gumbau-Brisa. Henok graduated with BA in economics and an MA in development economics from the University of Asmara(Eritrea). He was assistant lecturer at the College of Business and Economics in Eritrea before joining the PhD program in international economics and finance at Brandeis University’s International Business School, and expects to earn his doctorate in 2013. Henok’s research primarily focuses on the interaction between finance and macroeconomics and this relationship’s policy implications. At present he is looking at the role of regulatory bank capital and banking sector efficiency during the Great Recession. His work at the Boston Fed covers projects on inflation dynamics, dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models, and monetary policy.

Kevin Todd is a 2010 graduate of the University of Michigan who works for senior economist Mary Burke and economist Daniel Cooper. He is involved in research pertaining to inflation expectations, obesity, and household debt, among other topics.

Vladimir Yankov works with senior economist Christina Wang. Together they are working on how changes in the maturity structure of government debt impacts banks’ cost of funds, as the two are viewed as a vehicle for risk-averse investors to safely allocate wealth through time and states of nature. Born and raised in Bulgaria—a small eastern European country that was part of the Soviet bloc firmly sealed from the rest of the world by the Iron Curtain— when he was nine years old Vladimir witnessed the collapse of the totalitarian communist regime and with it the whole centralized economic system. This formative experience ultimately led him to study economics. Vladimir obtained a BA in economics from Sofia University in Bulgaria, an MA at the Central European University in Budapest, and is pursuing a Ph.D.in economics at Boston University.

Yifan Yu works with economist Federico Díez and economist Ali Ozdagli. Originally from Shanghai, China, she graduated in 2011 with a BA in economics and mathematics from Mount Holyoke College. Yifan’s major research interests lie in international trade, macroeconomics, and finance. Her current projects with Dr. Díez and Dr. Ozdagli at the Boston Fed involve assessing the effects of US and foreign tariffs on intra-firm trade and offshoring decisions, examining the impacts of foreign competition on self-employment levels, and studying the responsiveness of equity market to monetary policy shocks.

Hanbing Zhang works with senior economist Scott Schuh, director of the Consumer Payments Research Center (CPRC) in the research department. After obtaining a BA in economics from China’s Peking University, she came to the United States to continue her graduate study. Currently she holds an MA in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and an MA in statistics from Harvard University. Her major research interests center on survey methodology and causal relationship identification in statistics. At the CPRC she is involved in maintaining and analyzing data from the Survey of Consumer Payment Choice, a flagship study the center conducts on U.S. consumers' payment choices and impact of these choices. This work provides her a unique experience in tackling practical problems in survey methodology.