The Cook Center is committed to fostering the development of postdoctoral associates and offering distinctive opportunities to understand and address issues of social inequality.
We have hosted exceptional postdoctoral scholars from a range of academic disciplines who have used this opportunity to refine their expertise, establish a strong professional network, and prepare for a successful career in academia or industry.
2023-2025 Postdoctoral Cohort
Explore the profiles of our current postdoctoral associates for the 2023-2025 period, representing the best and brightest in interdisciplinary social equity research.
Aten Zaandam
Aten is a management scholar whose research examines how adverse life experiences and perceptions of morality influence the strategic decision-making of top executives. Before joining Duke, he served as a research fellow for the Babson College Center for Entrepreneurship, where he examined how Black healthcare entrepreneurs overcome systematic marginalization. He also worked as a researcher at the Defense Equal Opportunity Institute where he sought to determine how conscious and unconscious racial biases decreased military preparedness.
Ayinwi Muma
Ayinwi Muma is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University. Her research examines the impact of regulatory policy changes on entrepreneurial activity across various socially-constructed identity groups, e.g., race and gender.
Her dissertation explores three central questions: First, in “normal times” how do young, relatively unknown entrepreneurial firms introduce novel technologies into established organizational contexts? Second, what happened to investments in early-stage entrepreneurship during the COVID-19 pandemic? Third, how did the June 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade affect subsequent entrepreneurial activity across states in the U.S., and what are the implications for entrepreneurship and labor force participation among women?
Ayinwi holds a B.A. in English & Comparative Literature from Columbia University, an M.B.A. in Strategic Management from Georgia Institute of Technology, and (will soon hold!) a Ph.D. in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University in Summer 2023.
Elizabeth Degefe
Pak Hung Lam
Pak Hung is an applied economist whose research interests center on development, education, environmental, and health economics. He is particularly interested in critical issues related to population health, economic development in Africa and Asia, and global environmental health and justice issues. Prior to joining Duke, he earned his Ph.D. in Social Science from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and served as a Visiting Ph.D. student at the Yale School of Public Health. His website can be found here.
Quran Karriem
Quran is an experimental musician, media artist and theorist working primarily with electronic and algorithmic media. His research is concerned with human improvisation and automated decision, particularly insofar as they reproduce sovereign power and racial hierarchy through semi-autonomous knowledge systems. His work examines the power relations and ideologies that inhere in the design of digital systems, processes and interfaces, and is motivated by a concern with the operative and recursive nature of computational, racialized capital in postmodern sociotechnical assemblages.
A multiple award-winning software designer and former product executive, Quran has led development teams for a number of media and technology companies and applies a decade of direct experience with systems design, data management and organizational structure in the context of ‘start-up culture’ to social critique. His product initiatives have been recognized by such global research and trade bodies as Gartner Research, the Groupe Spéciale Mobile Association (GSMA), the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) and Frost & Sullivan.
Sungmee Kim
Sungmee is an applied microeconomist specializing in education and health policy for K-12 students and young adults in the United States and South Korea. With a focus on closing the gap between diverse groups, Sungmee conducts quantitative research to integrate educational and health outcomes to inform policy decisions.
Her recent work provides a comprehensive analysis of gender differences in remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting trends and potential mechanisms behind disparities in academic performance throughout the period of school closures and the subsequent return to in-person learning. Her ongoing research includes examining the impact of the ACA Medicaid expansion on closing the “coverage gap” for low-income young adults and investigating how variations in primary learning modalities during the pandemic influenced trends in child maltreatment allegations and foster care placements.
Sungmee holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Georgia State University, where she worked as a graduate research assistant at the Metro Atlanta Policy Lab for Education (MAPLE) of the Georgia Policy Labs.
Wenran Fan
Wenran is an applied economist with research interest focus on environmental policy and environmental justice. Her research aims to use survey data to explore the potential discrepancies in recreational benefits among different socioeconomic groups. She is currently a PhD candidate in economics at Iowa State University, received her Master’s degree from Boston University and her Bachelor’s degree from Nanjing University.
Will Damron
Will is a postdoctoral associate at the Cook Center. His research focuses on the economic history of the American South. Prior to joining the Cook Center, he completed a PhD in economics at Yale University and a BS at Davidson College.
