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CDDRL Honors Alumna Named 2025 Knight-Hennessy Scholar

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Congratulations to Liza Goldberg, a graduate of CDDRL's 2023-24 Fisher Family Honors Program, on her selection as a 2025 Knight-Hennessy Scholar. Knight-Hennessy Scholars cultivates and supports a multidisciplinary and multicultural community of graduate students from across Stanford University and delivers engaging experiences that prepare graduates to be visionary, courageous, and collaborative leaders who address complex challenges facing the world.

Originally from Columbia, Maryland, Liza “is pursuing a PhD in Earth System Science at Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability. She received a bachelor’s degree in Earth Systems at Stanford University and a master’s degree in climate change and planetary health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Liza pairs satellite remote sensing and qualitative analysis to build climate change resilience in settings of poverty and humanitarian emergencies, especially across South Asia. She has worked as an earth scientist at NASA since age 14 and has presented her published research worldwide. As a National Geographic Explorer, Liza founded and directs a global initiative to build remote sensing capacity in low-resource institutions across climate front lines. She leads an international team leveraging space technology to monitor the Rohingya refugee crisis and preserve multigenerational refugee histories.”

Liza is a Marshall Scholar, a Google Developer Expert, and a Sigma Squared Fellow. In 2024, she was inducted into the academic honors society Phi Beta Kappa.

At CDDRL, Liza received the Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research for her honors thesis, “The Psychology of Adolescent Poverty Under Climate Change: Evidence from Bangladesh,” based on extensive fieldwork and groundbreaking research into gender and climate adaptation. When asked what initially attracted her to the Fisher Family Honors Program, she shared at the time: “I am excited to have the opportunity to formally cross my interests in climate science and development policy through this program. I have also been very fortunate to receive extensive mentorship from my two CDDRL advisors throughout my time at Stanford, and I very much look forward to continuing to work together, as well as with the entire outstanding CDDRL faculty group, throughout the course of writing my thesis.”

Regarding her future aspirations post-Stanford, Liza shared upon her acceptance into the Fisher Family Honors Program, "I seek to dedicate my education and career to applying groundbreaking satellite technology in aiding climate adaptation across low- and middle-income nations."

You can read the full Knight-Hennessy Scholars press release here.

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CDDRL 2024 Honors Thesis Awardees Liza Goldberg and Melissa Severino de Oliveira
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CDDRL Fisher Family Honors Program Graduates Recognized for Outstanding Theses

Liza Goldberg ('24) is a recipient of the 2024 Firestone Medal, and Melissa Severino de Oliveira ('24) has won CDDRL's Outstanding Thesis Award.
CDDRL Fisher Family Honors Program Graduates Recognized for Outstanding Theses
Phi Beta Kappa graduates
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CDDRL Congratulates Newly Elected 2024 Phi Beta Kappa Members

Liza Goldberg and Melissa Severino de Oliveira (Fisher Family Honors Program class of 2024) are among the newest members of this prestigious academic honors society.
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Liza Goldberg
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Senior Liza Goldberg named 2024 Marshall Scholar

The scholarship will support Goldberg’s graduate studies in climate change, planetary health, and environment and development.
Senior Liza Goldberg named 2024 Marshall Scholar
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Liza Goldberg (Fisher Family Honors Program class of 2023-24) is among 84 scholars in the Knight-Hennessy Scholars' eighth cohort.

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Reducing emissions and air pollution from informal brick kilns: Evidence from Bangladesh

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We present results from a randomized controlled trial in Bangladesh that introduced operational practices to improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions in 276 “zigzag” brick kilns. Of all intervention kilns, 65% adopted the improved practices. Treatment assignment reduced energy use by 10.5% (P-value <0.001) and decreased CO2 and PM2.5 emissions by 171 and 0.45 metric tons, respectively, per kiln per year. Valuing the CO2 reductions using a social cost of carbon of 185 USD per metric ton, we find that the social benefits outweigh costs by a factor of 65 to 1. The intervention, which required no new capital investment, also decreased fuel costs and increased brick quality. Our results demonstrate the potential for privately profitable, as well as publicly beneficial, improvements to address environmental problems in informal industries.

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Science
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Stephen P. Luby
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No. 6747

Evidence of turmeric adulteration with lead chromate across South Asia

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Food adulteration with toxic chemicals is a global public health threat. Lead chromate adulterated spices have been linked with lead poisoning in many countries, from Bangladesh to the United States. This study systematically assessed lead chromate adulteration in turmeric, a spice that is consumed daily across South Asia. Our study focused on four understudied countries that produce >80 % of the world's turmeric and collectively include 1.7 billion people, 22 % of the world's population. Turmeric samples were collected from wholesale and retail bazaars from 23 major cities across India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal between December 2020 and March 2021. Turmeric samples were analyzed for lead and chromium concentrations and maximum child blood lead levels were modeled in regions where samples had detectable lead. A total of 356 turmeric samples were collected, including 180 samples of dried turmeric roots and 176 samples of turmeric powder. In total, 14 % of the samples (n = 51) had detectable lead above 2 μg/g. Turmeric samples with lead levels greater than or equal to 18 μg/g had molar ratios of lead to chromium near 1:1, suggestive of lead chromate adulteration. Turmeric lead levels exceeded 1000 μg/g in Patna (Bihar, India) as well as Karachi and Peshawar (Pakistan), resulting in projected child blood lead levels up to 10 times higher than the CDC's threshold of concern. Given the overwhelmingly elevated lead levels in turmeric from these locations, urgent action is needed to halt the practice of lead chromate addition in the turmeric supply chain.

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Science of The Total Environment
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Dinsha Mistree
Stephen P. Luby
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2024, 175003

Beyond Climate Dread

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When you think of the climate crisis and the major impact it will have upon all corners of the world, one nation stands out as the epicenter of the unfolding cataclysmic changes: Bangladesh.

When Stephen Luby, MD, began working there two decades ago, the South Asian country was facing tremendous climate stress brought on by intermittent floods, extreme heat, cyclones and drought that threatened human life.

 

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Stephen Luby is among a growing number of Stanford Medicine community members dedicated to finding solutions to urgent problems of planetary and human health.

The Impact of Community Masking on COVID-19: A Cluster-Randomized Trial in Bangladesh

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We conducted a cluster-randomized trial to measure the effect of community-level mask distribution and promotion on symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections in rural Bangladesh from November 2020 to April 2021 (N = 600 villages, N = 342,183 adults). We cross-randomized mask type (cloth vs. surgical) and promotion strategies at the village and household level. Proper mask-wearing increased from 13.3% in the control group to 42.3% in the intervention arm (adjusted percentage point difference = 0.29 [0.26, 0.31]). The intervention reduced symptomatic seroprevalence (adjusted prevalence ratio (aPR) = 0.91 [0.82, 1.00]), especially among adults 60+ years in villages where surgical masks were distributed (aPR = 0.65 [0.45, 0.85]). Mask distribution and promotion was a scalable and effective method to reduce symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections.

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A randomized trial of community-level mask promotion in rural Bangladesh during COVID-19 shows that the intervention increased mask-use and reduced symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections.

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Innovations for Poverty Action
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Stephen P. Luby

Stanford Global Development and Poverty initiative awards $4.6 million for research aimed at alleviating poverty

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Fourteen Stanford researchers addressing global poverty through a range of academic disciplines are receiving a total of $4.6 million in awards from the university-wide Global Development and Poverty (GDP) initiative.

Their projects, which are the first to be funded by the GDP, deal with challenges of health, violence, economics, governance and education in the developing world.

“GDP seeks to transform scholarly activity and dialogue at Stanford around the topic of global poverty, so that the university may have a greater impact on poverty alleviation in developing economies,” said GDP faculty co-chair Jesper B. Sørensen. “By focusing on placing a small number of big bets, GDP encourages researchers to think big, and to move beyond the conventional way of doing things. We are thrilled by the inaugural set of awardees, as they demonstrate the creative, inter-disciplinary approaches that will make Stanford a leader in this area.”

The GDP initiative is part of the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies (SEED) and is administered in partnership with Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). The GDP is co-chaired by Sørensen, the faculty director for SEED and the Robert A. and Elizabeth R. Jeffe Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business; and Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, senior fellow and director of FSI and the Stanley Morrison Professor at Stanford Law School.

SEED, which seeks to alleviate poverty by stimulating the creation of economic opportunities through innovation, entrepreneurship and the growth of businesses, was established in 2011 through a generous gift from Robert King, MBA '60, and his wife, Dorothy.

Through complementary areas of focus, GDP funding and other SEED research initiatives will stimulate research, novel interdisciplinary collaborations and solutions to problems of global poverty and development. GDP research aims to pursue answers to crucial questions that are essential to an understanding of how to reduce global poverty and promote economic development. That includes governance and the rule of law, education, health, and food security – all of which are essential for entrepreneurship to thrive. By contrast, other SEED research focuses on innovation, entrepreneurship, and the growth of businesses in developing economies.

Since 2012, SEED’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Developing Economies Award program also has doled out 22 awards and seven PhD fellowships to help support and scale businesses in developing economies. Among the $1 million in funded projects were studies of how to improve the livelihoods of small-holder cacao farmers throughout the tropics; how to identify startups with high job- and wealth-creating potential in Chile; how political accountability affects the ability to attract investment in Sierra Leone; and how managerial practices affect trade entrepreneurship in China.

First GDP Awards

The first 14 GDP award recipients are professors of economics, political science, law, medicine, pediatrics, education and biology, and senior fellows from FSI, the Woods Institute, and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR).

“Each of these projects cuts across disciplines, reflects innovative thinking, and has the potential to generate crucial knowledge about how to improve the lives of the poor around the world,” Cuéllar said. “These projects, along with a variety of workshops engaging the university and external stakeholders, will help us strengthen Stanford’s long-term capacity to address issues of global poverty through research, education and outreach.”

Among the award recipients is Pascaline Dupas, an associate professor of economics and senior fellow at SIEPR. Dupas, along with faculty from the Center for Health Policy and Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, will launch the Stanford Economic Development Research Initiative using GDP funds.  This initiative will focus on collecting high-quality institutional and individual-level data on economic activity in a number of developing countries over the long term, and making these data available to scholars around the world.

Beatriz Magaloni, an associate professor of political science and senior fellow at FSI, is receiving an award to lead a team focused on criminal violence and its effects on the poor in developing economies, and the practical solutions for increasing security in those regions.

Douglas K. Owens, a professor of medicine and FSI senior fellow, was awarded an award to help him lead a team that will develop models to estimate how alternative resource allocations for health interventions among the poor will influence health and economic outcomes.

Stephen Haber, a professor of political science and history and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, received an award to bring together Stanford researchers interested in examining the long-term institutional constraints on economic development. Their goal will be to provide policymakers with a framework for determining the conditions under which particular innovations are likely to have positive payoffs, and the conditions under which resources will likely be wasted.

Other projects will address the educational impacts of solar lighting systems in poor communities; identifying interventions to improve the profits and safety among poor, smallholder pig farmers in Bangladesh and China; the role of law and institutions in economic development and poverty reduction; and how to rethink worldwide refugee problems. Awards are also being provided to researchers focused on microfinance, online education and teacher training.

The project proposals were reviewed by an interdisciplinary faculty advisory council chaired by Cuéllar and Sørensen. 

“We were very encouraged by the impressive number of project proposals from a wide range of areas and are looking forward to introducing several new capacity and community-building activities in the fall,” Sørensen said.. “This wide range of research initiatives will form a vibrant nucleus for Stanford’s growing community of scholars of global development and poverty.”

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Is There an Emerging Crisis of Democracy?

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Abstract:

Political polarization has paralyzed the functioning of democracy in Thailand, Bangladesh, and Taiwan, where students have recently occupied the parliament building.  Civil liberties and political opposition are under intensified assault by an abusive prime minister in Turkey.  Indian democracy is increasingly diminished by brazen corruption and rent-seeking. Several African democracies have failed, and others are slipping.  The Arab Spring has largely imploded, and Egypt is in the grip of military authoritarian rule more repressive than anything the country has seen in decades.  After invading and swallowing a piece of Ukraine, Russia now poses a gathering threat to its democratic postcommunist neighbors.  For the eighth consecutive year, Freedom House finds that the number of countries declining in freedom have greatly exceeded the number improving.  And most of the advanced industrial democracies, including the United States, seem unable to address their long-term fiscal and other policy challenges.  Is there an emerging global crisis of democracy?  And if so, why?

Speaker Bio:

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where he directs the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Diamond also serves as the Peter E. Haas Faculty Co-Director of the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and also serves as Senior Consultant (and previously was co-director) at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. During 2002-3, he served as a consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has also advised and lectured to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other governmental and nongovernmental agencies dealing with governance and development. His latest book, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (Times Books, 2008), explores the sources of global democratic progress and stress and the prospects for future democratic expansion.

 

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Larry Diamond

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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
diamond_encina_hall.png MA, PhD

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
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A Novel Approach to Crowdsource: the Detection and Management of Large-scale Cholera Outbreaks

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Abstract
Diarrheal disease is the second leading cause of death for children under five years of age, globally.  Barriers to improving outcomes include an inability to identify cases early, provide support, and understand transmission collectively at the household level.   In this talk, we will propose a project to use crowdsourcing to identify pre-emergency patients with diarrheal disease at the level of the household, improve outcomes by providing basic 24 hour access to oral rehydration solution via a social business model at the level of pharmacies, and establish a novel method for patient recruitment to increase statistical power while decreasing the cost of clinical research.  Our primary and initial use case will be twice annual cholera outbreaks in Bangladesh.  Partners include Stanford University, Medic Mobile, ideSHi, and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh.

Dr. Eric Nelson studied evolution at Cornell University (BA)  and conducted marine microbial ecology research in Papua New Guinea.  He then received a Masters Degree for studies on the symbiosis between light-producing bacteria and marine animals at the University of Hawaii.  Then he switched to microbial pathogenesis during my MD PhD training at Tufts University.  During this time, he received a Fogarty NIH fellowship to research cholera transmission at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh.  DR. Nelson co-authored an ebook called the Cholera Outbreak Training and Shigellosis (COTS) Program that has taken him to outbreaks in Zimbabwe and Haiti.  He also finished a Stanford pediatrics residency in 2013 and was awarded a Pediatric Global Health Postdoctoral Fellowship through the Stanford Society of Physician Scholars.  His core effort now is to explore ways to leverage mobile technology to overcome poverty-based barriers to improve health outcomes from diarrheal diseases.

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Eric Nelson, MD PhD Pediatric Global Health Postdoctoral Fellow Speaker Stanford University School of Medicine
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Shaping the Global Agenda on Child Protection

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Since the early years of her career working with children in some of the direst situations in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, Susan Bissell, UNICEF’s Chief of Child Protection, has witnessed children being targeted for such exploitative practices as human trafficking, recruitment into armed forces, and child labor. Violations of the child’s right to protection take place in every country and are massive, under-recognized, and under-reported barriers to child survival and development, in addition to being human rights violations. Children subjected to violence, exploitation, abuse and neglect are at risk of death, poor physical and mental health, HIV/AIDS infection, educational problems, displacement, and vagrancy.

 Protecting children from violence, exploitation and abuse is an integral component of protecting their rights to survival, growth, and development. UNICEF advocates and supports the creation of a protective environment for children in partnership with governments, national and international partners including the private sector, and civil society.  Bissell guides UNICEF’s Child Protection program in 170 countries, working with government officials and other partners to shape child protection policies. During this discussion, she will provide an overview of her role at UNICEF and the work she does to help ensure that governments honor their commitments to strengthen child protection systems and protect children.

In 2009, Susan Bissell was appointed to her current position in New York, heading all of UNICEF’s Child Protection work.  She oversees a team of professionals guiding efforts for children affected by armed conflict, child protection systems strengthening to prevent and respond to all forms of violence against children, and a range of other matters.

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Susan Bissell Chief of Child Protection Speaker UNICEF
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