Skye Yoden and Jessica Preston Harvey, second-year doctoral students in Health Policy, are 2025 recipients of the Raiffa Fund awards for their research projects.
Yoden’s project will focus on building scaffolding code in the programming language R to simplify teaching decision science methods for the Harvard Chan School course Decision Analysis Methods in Public Health and Medicine (RDS 285). Yoden’s project will also visualize the fundamental aspects of decision science in R that are covered in this course. She will be mentored by CHDS faculty Nicolas Menzies.
Harvey’s project will focus on the creation of educational material about cost-effectiveness analysis and quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) for the Harvard Chan School course Decision Analysis for Health and Medical Practices (RDS 280) and other introductory decision science courses. Harvey will be mentored by CHDS faculty Ankur Pandya.
About the Award
The Howard Raiffa Fund was established in 1996 at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis through the generosity of many donors wishing to honor Howard Raiffa, one of the true ‘founding fathers’ of decision science. The Fund supports the training of scholars pursuing doctoral studies in decision and risk analysis and is administered by CHDS. Following Raiffa’s model of engaged mentorship, awardees work closely with a member of the CHDS faculty in planning and implementing projects of their own design.
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