CV

University of California, San Diego

Ph.D. in Economics, 2022–present

Advisors: Julie Cullen, Julian Betts, Karthik Muralidharan, Samuel Bazzi

Fields: Education Economics, Political Economy, Applied Microeconometrics, Mechanism Design

University of Chicago

M.A. in Social Sciences (Economics), 2021–2022

University of California, San Diego

B.S. Mathematics (Honors with Distinction), B.A. Economics, 2017–2021

Paying for Knowledge: Evidence From a Voluntary Certification Program — Job Market Paper

Bullets to Ballots: How War Fatalities Shape Electoral Outcomes and Voter Behavior

with S. Gharibyan and L. Ivanov-Davtyan

The Latency Tax: Equilibrium Hoarding in Sequential School Choice

with A. Grigoryan

The Impact of Alternative Schools of Choice on Racial Sorting in Public Schools — M.A. Thesis

School Admissions Reform Recommendation — February 2025

Office of the Prime Minister and Ministry of Education, Armenia

Co-authored a formal policy proposal to adopt an offline, centralized deferred acceptance (Gale–Shapley) algorithm, identifying critical congestion flaws in the national first-come, first-served system. Collaborated directly with the National Center of Educational Technologies (NaCET/KTAK) on system challenges, data access, and reform design. (Joint work with Prof. Aram Grigoryan).

Survey Operations and Data-Infrastructure Development — 2024–present

Built an automated OCR and record-linkage pipeline using Python to digitize and extract signatures from ~2.5 million handwritten Armenian voter records per election cycle. Designed sampling frames, field protocols, and vendor scope-of-work for a large-scale CATI survey on war exposure and political behavior. Developing Sytra, an AI-assisted desktop application integrated with Stata and R to automate repetitive data cleaning, documentation, and reproducibility workflows for econometricians.

Teaching Assistant, Department of Economics — 2023–present

ECON 120A/B (Econometrics), ECON 5 (Data Analytics for Social Sciences), ECON 184 (Topics in Econ Data Analytics), ECON 147 (Economics of Education), ECON 100A/B (Intermediate Microeconomics), ECON 1 (Principles)

When I manage to step away from my research, my greatest passion is exploring the world. I've been fortunate enough to visit over 50 countries, and my favorite things to do along the way are experiencing local cultures and cuisines, scuba diving, hiking, and fishing. While free time is rare these days, my ideal way to recharge is spending time by the ocean—going for a run, swimming, or just relaxing and watching the sunset at the beach in San Diego.