Postdoctoral fellows are academia’s problem solvers. They embody the best characteristics of both senior graduate students and junior faculty members. Typically, postdocs embrace shorter-term professional opportunities to grow their own skill sets while helping institutions meet specific research challenges. Essential to most University of Toronto departments, these scholars manage labs, mentor grad students and junior researchers, and design and deliver major research projects with funding they apply for and obtain themselves.

Stanton Hudja is a postdoctoral researcher and manager of the Toronto Experimental Economics Lab (TEEL) housed at the Department of Economics. Over the course of his appointment, he has made significant contributions to both the department and the field of behavioural economics.

“Stanton is an experimental and behavioural economist,” said Professor Yoram Halevy, Director of the TEEL. “In addition to managing the lab and teaching a course in Game Theory he is doing exciting research. In his job market paper, he experimentally investigates decision makers’ attitudes to unknown outcomes. Using a novel experimental technique of eliciting conditional valuations, he can study how the probability of getting an unknown outcome and the payment in the complementary event affect subjects’ valuation. This is a novel foundational study in an area that has not been explored experimentally before.”

Stanton answered questions about the role of postdoc and what he’s learned from it.

Question: From undergraduate to post-doc, you’ve been building your academic foundations at a variety of universities across North America. How has that broad exposure influenced your approach to economics as a discipline? [Read more…]

Arts and Sciences at the University of Toronto attracts high performers. New undergrads arrive on campus, hit the ground running, and expect to earn their degrees at top speed. Then, they find unexpected hurdles on the track. Like many students, alumnus En Hua Hu had to change pace and learn how deal with new challenges at the beginning of his university career.

“The first year is difficult, and part of it is the classes,” En Hua said, “but part of it is also being in a new environment, facing certain types of disappointments for the first time. I did poorly in my first-year classes. Nonetheless, the university experience is a marathon, not a sprint, so I encourage undergraduate students to not let their performance discourage them in first or second year. There is still a lot of time and there is so much potential in everyone.”

Living at Innis College gave En Hua the space he needed to overcome his own initial disappointments.

“As my family did not live in Toronto, Innis provided a space that felt safe and welcoming,” he remembered. “I stayed at the residence, and it was a great experience.”

[Read more…]