Luke Sanford
@LC_Sanford
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Assistant Prof @YaleEnvironment . Environmental Politics, remote sensing, ML, causal inference. he/him. Mostly now posting from @lcsanford .bsky.social
Joined October 2014
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Reject -> reject -> reject -> reject -> R&R -> reject and resubmit -> conditional accept (🥳)
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The other part of the story is that GPS was the only place to take a chance on admitting me despite having an unusual application profile—both for the masters and the PhD.
“I studied political science in undergrad, but it lacked that quantitative component — this factored into my graduate school search and led me to GPS.” -
@LC_Sanford
Luke earned his Ph.D. from GPS in '21 — now a professor at
@YaleEnvironment
.
Full story:
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Yale's brand new Institute for the Foundations of Data Science is recruiting 2-3 year postdocs to "work with leading theorists and domain scientists (🙋♂️)" . Salary is $95K with $10K dedicated research/travel fund. Apply here:
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PhD rejections:
Round 1: Everywhere (accepted to UCSD policy masters with no funding)
Round 2: Harvard Stanford Princeton Yale Berkeley MIT Michigan Columbia UCLA etc.
Round 2 accepted: UCSD, Washington
Ended up with a great cohort and the best advisors 10/10
Only had budget for 6 schools (didn't know abt waivers), so ended up with:
Princeton ❌
Yale❌
Duke❌
NYU❌
Stanford ❌
Applied to one other school not because there was much fit (3 of my eventual 4 advisors weren't even on faculty yet) but strictly on vibes:
MIT✔️
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The adventures of 🦒 and 🦖/🐊/🐉 (depending on when you ask her)
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The combo of low grad student pay and little affordable housing in the area is pretty terrible at UCSD. Grad students should not be expected to pay >50% of their stipend on university-owned housing.
#FairUCNow
Students at University of California San Diego, and across the state, are demonstrating to demand housing justice, fair pay, and respect. San Diego police are on scene to ensure traffic is diverted to promote the safety of those involved in the demonstration.
#FairUCNow
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In no particular order:
Excellent advisors
Great cohort
Surfing
Wife + extended family
Dog
Okay, so what actually helped you get through your PhD? (Or is helping you now?)
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Come see me talk about satellite data, machine learning, and how it can help us do better conservation impact evaluation!
#TuesdaysWithTeamcounterfactual
is back on 2 May (10am ET / 4pm CET) w/
@LC_Sanford
and "Machine Learning for Impact Evaluation: Environmental effects of land tenure formalization" Not yet among >1000 people registered for the
@idoimpact
series? Go to:
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Have 35 slides prepared for a 5 minute lightning talk tomorrow
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After many interesting and productive conversations at the last APSA, we're trying to grow and connect the environment/climate political economy crowd by hosting a 1-day pre-conference
@APSAtweets
.
Lots of options for participation, lots of time for forging new collaborations
Going to
@APSAtweets
in LA? Interested in the political economy of environment and climate?
Consider applying to this "incubator" pre-conference to be hosted at UCLA (deadline 4/14):
We aim to spark new research and collaborations!
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#postdocposition
I am looking for two postdocs to join the SPIRES Lab at the Yale School of the Environment. More information here:
Please RT, more information below:
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Looking for good examples of general interest journal social science papers (Science, Nature PNAS) that focus on theoretical innovations rather than empirical applications. Any good examples?
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Shout out to the absolute dream team of
@mollyeroberts
and
@jaburney
who were so supportive and encouraging and invested from start to finish. Always had great feedback, trusted me as a collaborator, and did all they could to make grad school financially feasible.
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I benefited from a robust graduate student union at UCSD and support unionization and living wages for grad students. Science isn’t worth it if it requires the people doing the science to be mistreated.
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New paper with the best group of co-authors. Read to the end for the link to the
#gee
app that
@SusiABenz
put together.
📢New paper out today!📢
Disparate air pollution reductions during California’s COVID-19 economic shutdown by a wonderful group of equal contributors - Richard Bluhm,
@khemesphere
,
@LC_Sanford
,
@SusiABenz
,
@morganclevy
,
@katericke
, and
@jaburney
🧵👇
Link:
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Survived semester 1 but the rapidly changing COVID landscape and the delay to <5yo vax timeline are a rough start to winter break
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Just had the pleasure of chairing a great methodology poster session. You can find the posters here: then click 8: Political Methodology. People on the cutting edge of a number of different methods! Go check out their posters and give them some feedback!
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Thankful for all the friends and family who helped make 2021 a pretty good year for me. Here’s to paying it forward in 2022.
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After UCSD in case anyone was wondering 💪
My friends at
@UCBerkeley
are hiring! If the selling point of a top poli sci department and awesome colleagues isn't enough, I'd like to point out that you'd also be teaching at the great state of California's SECOND best institution of higher learning 💪🤣
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I’m team Sunday Surfing Day
Grad Students: If you aren’t at my university, and you want me on your dissertation committee, don’t email me and say you can’t meet on Sundays because it’s your “surfing day.” Sunday should be a writing day, first of all. Second, we meet when I say so. Period.
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Nice thread! Jumping on this opportunity to say I would be excited to meet with any grad students/postdocs (actually anyone) working on environmental politics or applied methods or applied machine learning or… something else that you might want to talk about!
But don't just go after the big names -- look up other junior scholars! Some of them may be way more active in the field than the seniors, & their schedules may be more open. Again, as a student, you don't need some concrete reason to meet with them, and ppl are
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It me.
If you haven't been suddenly gripped by panic that you might have made a coding error six months ago, causing you to have to stop doing dishes and go pull up your code, have you even done research?
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Check out this great postdoc opportunity! Happy to answer questions and/or tell you about the exciting projects I am firing up in this realm.
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Have observed our <2yo kid practicing fake laughing and fake crying IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR how old do they have to be to enroll in acting classes?
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I’m not on the selection committee but I did point at maps in a lightning talk at the kickoff event.
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Check out this awesome paper by
@mdgordo
! He shows that contrary to what you might think, targeting disaster aid based on observable damage doesn’t make people better off than giving aid to everyone in affected regions—it does worse!
In an effort to get this out before twitter collapses, here is my 🚨JMP🚨 thread
#econtwittter
:
Question: How should we target disaster reconstruction aid?
Answer: Maybe we shouldn't.
More below and at my website:
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What a great home for this awesome paper! Check out the 🧵 👇
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🚨Major life update🚨
Today, I officially receive my PhD from
@polisciucla
@UCLA
!
I'm so happy to share that I will join the faculty
@UCSBPoliSci
@ucsantabarbara
as Assistant Professor in 2023, after a postdoctoral fellowship
@YaleEnvironment
and
@YaleBiosphere
@Yale
next year
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Both a recent hire at YSE and on the search committee for Society and Forests, lmk if you have questions
YSE is hiring for two new tenure-track
#faculty
positions!
Assistant Professor in Society and
#Forests
:
Assistant or Associate Professor in
#Urban
#Sustainability
:
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First time identifying with Calvin’s dad
Snooooow daaay just in time for the day when I have all my AEA sessions and meetings plannnnned
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As usual Yiqing and amazing co-authors doing great work. Now 50% of the time someone asks me a methods question I just forward one of Yiqing’s papers
(1/7) Sharing a new paper w/ Albert Chiu,
@liuziyi233
, & Xingchen Lan:
We surveyed six newly proposed estimators as potential remedies to TWFE models under HTE and conducted a systematic reanalysis of 38 recently published papers in APSR, AJPS & JOP.
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Let’s please make sure
@Shugars
gets a job! Mostly because she is a top-notch academic and person, but also to keep the supply of lanyards (and other public goods she provides the community) flowing
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Sign up for this webinar!! This is going to be a great talk
Interested in using econometrics+remote sensing to measure the impacts of conservation policy? Join to hear about research (w/ Alberto Garcia) showing common pitfalls and solutions. Super excited to present in
@idoimpact
's fantastic Conservation Impact Evaluation seminar series.
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Great piece by
@KathrynBaragwa
on where things stand with the Brazilian Amazon now that Lula is back.
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Huge thanks to
@xuyiqing
and the rest of the
#polmethXL
@PolMethSociety
for organizing a great conference. Brain is definitely overflowing
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Did you see the Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on Carbon Offset Markets () and want to learn more? Sign up for free public webinars with top experts in the field! Hosted by
@SaraKuebbing
and
@bradfordlab
and myself.
Our
#YaleForestForum
held on Thursdays starting 9/8 asks: What Makes a High Quality
#Forest
#CarbonCredit
? We will dive into multiple points of view and expertise.
This series is free and open to the public.
Register here:
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The best.
BREAKING: Pizza Today has named Modern Apizza in New Haven, Connecticut, the 2023 Pizzeria of the Year. Congrats to Bill Pustari, family and his amazing team! Read Modern's story now:
#modernapizza
#pizzeriaoftheyear
#pizzeria
#pizza
#pizzanews
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@GarrettMAA
It's about what differences in air pollution during the shutdown can tell us about environmental racism in California. Longer thread coming once things are finalized!
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My dad recently got a kids book about the Han dynasty for our daughter since she recently visited China, ended up with this book which was clearly written and illustrated by an AI (and is part of a larger series which is all like this):
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Hi
#AcademicTwitter
who has a "lab manual" that you use to set expectations and procedures for RAs/grad students/collaborators/etc.? Working on one and would love to see some examples if you're willing to share.
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I appreciate all the new follows, but I have mostly moved over to the 🔵☁️ platform. Let me know if you want to move and need an invite code
The other part of the story is that GPS was the only place to take a chance on admitting me despite having an unusual application profile—both for the masters and the PhD.
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Very exciting first session at the intersection of environmental science and causal inference, a great opportunity for those interested in environmental politics to get involved
Join us starting May 3rd for
#TuesdaysWithTeamcounterfactual
for a new seminar series by
@eklund_jo
and
@pauljferraro
in coordination with the Impact Evaluation Working Group of
@Society4ConBio
. Register here: & see the attached line up!
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So I think we will have to do this again. Fun, engaging, and energetic day gathering colleagues old and new to discuss and brainstorm research on climate and environment. Stay tuned!
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Required reading for empiricists 👇
Economists love using linear regression to estimate treatment effects — it turns out that there are perils to this method, but also amazing perks
Come with me in this 🧵 if you want to learn…
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@cesicruz
@rjschoner
I mean it’s an easy task to hype really great people who are producing 🔥 work (like the rest of my UCSD cohort!)
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If you haven't had a chance yet, now is a great time to check out this awesome (and now award-winning) paper by
@cmcclean
Delighted and honored to have won this year's Best Paper Award from
@epovb
@APSAtweets
for my paper on strategic election timing, now published
@cps_journal
Paper:
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Anyone have an RD null result paper that they think is well done that a student can use as an example?
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Yay!
Very happy to share that I am now at
@YaleMacMillan
's Council on East Asian Studies as the Japan Foundation CGP (
@JF_NewYork
) Postdoctoral Associate! Looking forward to my time in New Haven!
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Shot:
#DontLookUp
Chaser:
Doomsday update just dropped:
"If Thwaites Glacier collapses, it opens the door for the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet to slide into the sea. ... It’s not only goodbye Miami, but goodbye to virtually every low-lying coastal city in the world."
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Trying out 2 weeks of car-less parenting courtesy of a catalytic converter theft last night. Of course it’s going to be rainy next week…
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@cullenhendrix
Also, if you’re on the market please remember that even a “good” market is still brutal and unfair for systemic reasons that are 100% out of your control.
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@madasascientist
@sarahecastle
@ProfEricColeman
@karnebe
@rach_garr
@FLAREglobal
Grateful to whichever
#FLARE22ROME
organizer deposited me on such an awesome panel (with really insightful audience questions to boot!)
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@gordon_h_hanson
I have great mentors at
@YaleEnvironment
Some of the things they help me with include:
1. Which department service to do
2. How to choose grad students and RAs
3. A strategy for which papers/journals to pursue/target
4. Intros to important people or opportunities
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@polisciprofhi
UCSD grad student
@gabederoche
is doing excellent work on climate change and migration in a comparative context and might be able to give advice (check out his website: )
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This explainer thread is 💯
2 useful papers today on how you can get basically any answer you want from regressions using arcsinh(y) or log(y+1)
I made these graphs to show the problem: The mean of the transformed var (black lines) varies like crazy by what units you choose for y
🧵 on my own take-aways
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What is the paper I remeber from last year on researcher degrees of freedom in synthetic controls?
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@VivianoDavide
@HarvardEcon
@StanfordGSB
@UCSDEcon
Congrats Davide! It has been clear that you are wildly talented since our first conversation (during your first year!) so no surprise. Excited to see what you'll accomplish at this next stage.
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I'm thrilled to announce I'll be spending next year at
@PrincetonSPIA
Niehaus Center as a Postdoctoral Researcher!
Incredibly grateful to those who made this possible. Because it takes a village, y'all!
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For when Reviewer 2 says they wish you had written a different paper
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@lockhartm
I had the opposite experience where I was less stressed living on campus than off...
Probably we should just pay grad students enough that they can live either in campus housing or off campus!
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@fgenovese__
@LeverhulmeTrust
Congratulations! Wonderful news, very excited to see what you all will produce
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As the
#MPSA
deadline approaches,
@CesarBenAlvarez
and I are planning on putting together a last-minute environmental politics panel. If you have a suitable paper and like us waited until the last minute, reach out!
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This! Thanks
@JillDeines
for saying this so well.
I chatted with a grad student and new mom yesterday, who was struggling to make time for some research with a 2 month old baby and wondered if she should quit. Thought maybe she wasn't able to manage her time ok.
So just to say publicly: Newborns are HARD, and work can wait 1/.
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Just had the pleasure of chairing a great methodology poster session. You can find the posters here: then click 8: Political Methodology. People on the cutting edge of a number of different methods! Go check out their posters and give them some feedback!
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@joshmccrain
@zfurnas
@keithschnak
Definitely! Started with Stormlight and then went to Mistborn and it was weird.
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🔥
Fields are basic units of agriculture. 🌾 Digital field boundaries are needed to deliver field-level analytics to farmers. But most of the world lacks field boundary datasets.
A thread on filling the data gap with satellites and deep learning, from our latest paper. 🛰
🧵 1/n
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@joshfjelstul
This is super cool! 🎉 🎊 Looks like for now it’s just men’s World Cup right? It would be awesome if it eventually included women’s too! Is that in the works?
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@travisbcurtice
@KhoaVuUmn
You can fine me frantically typing research ideas into my phone before my fingers freeze on the chairlift sometimes
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LOL
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@cullenhendrix
At least from the demand side! Though probably even more than the normal competition from those stuck in contingent positions because of the pandemic job market slump.
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@RossRichendrfer
“Look, I'm good at some things, I could be good at grad school too if you let me try” was basically my SOP
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