Researcher Spotlight: Noah Liu, MPP
At the BIP Lab, our main goal is to understand parental decision-making. Information is power, and learning about someone else’s personal experience can be particularly helpful when making decisions for your career. In our “Researcher Spotlight” interview series, we spoke with our researchers to learn about their motivations, their work, and what they like about the BIP Lab.
This time we chatted with Noah Liu, a predoctoral researcher at the BIP Lab. Noah works on literature reviews, research project and instrument design, data analyses, and writing.
BIP Lab: What drew you to work at the BIP Lab?
Liu: My research interests lie in education policy and behavioral economics. The early childhood development research conducted in the lab perfectly aligns with my research passion.
BIP Lab: What are you currently working on in the Lab?
Liu: I am working on two large-scale experiments, which measure the impact of behavioral messaging and learning methods on parents’ engagement in their children’s education and resulting literacy and math performance. I was responsible for data analyses, including analyzing attrition rates, imputing missing data with various means, running intent-to-treat and local average treatment effect models, and exploring heterogeneous treatment effects on subsamples.
BIP Lab: What is one of your biggest professional accomplishments to date?
Liu: Joining the BIP Lab as a pre-doc research fellow!
BIP Lab: When and how did you first become interested in your field?
Liu: During my master’s program in public policy, I became interested in social inequality issues through courses and internships studying related topics in Chicago. These experiences led me to think about how researchers and policymakers can tackle these problems by improving education quality and increasing the human capital of minority groups.
BIP Lab: What was the most useful piece of information you received at the beginning of your career and how was it helpful?
Liu: A supervisor from one of my college internships told me to only focus on one thing for my career. So, I chose to conduct research in social science fields because it interests me the most. My focus on research also makes me determined to pursue a career in academics.
BIP Lab: What is something that your experience at the BIP Lab has taught you?
Liu: The goal of behavioral interventions in children’s human capital development is not only about increasing the time and frequency of parent-child interaction. We also need parents to recognize the value of their interactions with children and be intrinsically motivated to follow good educational methods.
BIP Lab: What do you enjoy doing in your free time?
Liu: I work out every day and always try different kinds of sports.