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Graduate Student Research Assistants
REAL's Research Assistants come primarily from the Departments of Geography, Economics, Agricultural and Consumer Economics and Urban and Regional Planning, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Research Assistants
José
D. De León Alejandro
Master's Student
Department of Geography
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
220 Davenport Hall
607 S. Mathews Ave. MC-150
Urbana, IL 61801
e-mail: deleonal@uiuc.edu
Jose De Leon earned his BA (Summa Cum Laude) from the
University of
Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras in 2005. He joined
the
University of
Illinois and REAL in Summer 2005. His main research interest is the impact
of potential climate change in socioeconomic sectors such as transportation,
housing, tourism, migration, and so on, especially on countries within the
Caribbean Region. He also is interest in topics such as the improvement of
urban transportation systems and the creation of vulnerability indexes of
natural disasters (related to climate change) for socioeconomic sectors.
Currently, De Leon
is working in his Master's thesis which is about the potential economic impact
of sea-level rise on the Luis Muñoz Marin International
Airport (SJU) in Puerto Rico. First,
he is trying to estimate the regional economic
contributions of the SJU to the San Juan Metropolitan Area of Puerto Rico.
Then, he will consider some options to mitigate the impact of sea-level rise
on SJU and develop cost-benefit analyses in order to determine which one
would be the most feasible.
In his free time, he enjoys hearing music, watching movies and sports (i.e.,
horse raicing, wrestling, basketball and soccer),
dancing, and playing with his daughter.
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Soo Jung Ha
Ph.D Candidate
Department of Urban & Regional Planning
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
220 Davenport Hall
607 S. Mathews Ave. MC-150
Urbana, IL 61801
e-mail: sooha@uiuc.edu
Soo Jung Ha started the PhD program in the University of Illinois in Spring 2003. She has been working on updating REIM (Regional Econometric Input-Output Model) and reconstructing of the Chicago model to continuous time versions as a Research Assistant in REAL. Her researches focus on investigating the integrated regional economic model to examine the spatial structural difference and the spatial interdependence of regional economic structure through transport network or cost change.
Soo Jung finished her MS in Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea in 2000 with her thesis, “An Analysis of Structural Change of Interregional Development Inequity”. And she also worked as an assistant research fellow in KRIHS (Korea Research Institute for Human Settlement) for two years.
During her free time, she loves playing tennis, traveling and watching the art performance with her friends.
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Jae Hong Kim
Ph.D Candidate
Department of Urban & Regional Planning
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
111 Temple Buell Hall
611 Taft Drive. MC-620
Champaign, IL 61820
e-mail: kim68@uiuc.edu
Jae Hong Kim had joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2004; completed his master study in Urban and Regional Planning in 2006; and is now in PhD in Regional Planning program. He has attempted to understand the dynamic interrelationship between the progress of a regional economic system and the evolution of its spatial structure. In this context, he wishes to assess the validity, timeliness, and effectiveness of various land use, transportation, and economic development policies. Also, as a research assistant, he has been engaged in regional economic analysis and land use modeling projects for REAL and LEAM (Land Use Evolution and Impact Assessment Modeling) laboratory.
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Ph.D Candidate
Department of Geography
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
220 Davenport Hall
607 S. Mathews Ave. MC-150
Urbana, IL 61801
e-mail: jlee59@uiuc.edu
Jee-Sun Lee joined the University of Illinois and REAL in Fall 2001. Her main interests lie in commodity flows between regions and its influence on regional economic system. She worked as a member for the project to investigate the regional economic loss of transportation network destruction due to the earthquake. She is currently working on the development of a multiregional input-output model to detect regional economic interdependence based on the interregional trade within a multi-region system.
Jee-Sun earned her BA and MA from Seoul National University, in 1998 and 2000. Her master thesis involved identifying the spatial pattern of commodity flows in teleshopping business in Korea. Before coming to the University of Illinois, she also worked as a research scientist in Seoul Development Institute (Department of Urban Management) and Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements (GIS Center).
Her hobby is collecting stamps and she enjoys cooking, swimming, and playing tennis in her free time.
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Ph.D Candidate
Department of Urban & Regional Planning
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
220 Davenport Hall
607 S. Mathews Ave. MC-150
Urbana, IL 61801
e-mail: jlim2@uiuc.edu
Jaewon Lim first joined the department of Urban & Regional Planning in University of Illinois as a masters student in 1999. He got B.A. in engineering in the Department of Urban Planning & Engineering from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea in 1998. After his undergraduate studies, he had worked for Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements as a research scientist in GIS center. For his master degree, he mainly focused on GIS and urban development projects and wrote a thesis on ‘Public-Private Partnership in New Town Development’ with the case study of Korean new town development projects in early 1990s.
He is currently working with Professor Geoffrey J.D. Hewings at REAL with his specialization on interregional migration, regional labor market dynamics and regional economic impacts of demographic changes with the spatial econometric tools. He has a four-year old daughter and enjoys making films of his wife and daughter in his free time.
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Ph.D Candidate
Department of Urban & Regional Planning
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
220 Davenport Hall
607 S. Mathews Ave. MC-150
Urbana, IL 61801
e-mail: lufin@uiuc.edu
Marcelo arrived to REAL in fall 2003. He is currently working on his dissertation about structural community representations as complex systems, using several municipalities in Chile as case of study. Marcelo is pursuing his Ph. D degree in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, UIUC.
His research interests include social capital and regional economic development, agent based model and social network analysis, and socio-spatial analysis. Before Marcelo came to University of Illinois, he received his BS in Business Administration from Catholic University of Antofagasta (Chile), and his MA in Economics for ILADES-Georgetown University. In his free time, he enjoys watching movies, dancing, and drinking with his friends.
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Ph.D Candidate
Department of Economics
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
220 Davenport Hall
607 S. Mathews Ave. MC-150
Urbana, IL 61801
e-mail: spark2@uiuc.edu
Seryoung Park joined the University of Illinois in 2002 and REAL in 2004. He is working on CGE modeling and computation methods. Currently, he is building the Chicago CGE model to evaluate the impact of retirement migration and aging population on the regional economy. This model has many novel features in its treatment of regional migration, demand structure, and heterogeniety. He is also familiar with computational language, such as FORTRAN90 and MATLAB.
Before joining the University of Illinois, he has worked for the Bank of Korea since 1992. During ten years in the bank, he has conducted influential researches on monetary policy issues and business cycles. Now, he is in charge of compiling CBAI (Chicago Business Activity Index) and maintaining CREIM (Chicago Regional Econometric Input-Output model) in REAL.
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Ph.D Candidate
Department of Urban & Regional Planning
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
220 Davenport Hall
607 S. Mathews Ave. MC-150
Urbana, IL 61801
e-mail: sarraf@uiuc.edu
Saket Sarraf is
a PhD candidate in Regional Science at the
University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. He holds a Masters degree in Urban and Regional
Planning from UIUC and a Bachelors degree in architecture from the Indian
Institute of Technology, Kharagpur India. He has worked as an architect for two years before coming to
Illinois.
His research interest includes spatial econometrics, development economics,
land-use modeling and planning support systems. In his work with Land-use
Evolution and impact Assessment Model (LEAM) he has developed coherent tools
to assess impacts of economic growth and social imbalances on regional land-use
change and his doctoral dissertation models in depth the interrelation between
social dynamics and urban and regional growth. He intends to continue working
on issues pertaining to regional imbalances, land-use change, equity and
growth, gender and child labor in
India on completion of his PhD in summer 2006.
An active participant in academic and student discussions, he has made presentations
at conferences of North American Regional Science Association,
American Collegiate
Schools of Planning, American Planning Association and Transportation Research
Board. His teaching and academic excellence was recognized as he featured
on the campus wide 'incomplete list of teachers ranked as excellent' and
was recipient of the 'Outstanding Teaching Assistantship' and 'Outstanding
PhD student' awards for the year 2005-2006. In his free time Saket likes
reading, traveling, photography, sketching and enjoys intellectual gibberish! on culture,
religion, society and philosophy.
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Ph.D Candidate
Department of Urban & Regional Planning
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
220 Davenport Hall
607 S. Mathews Ave. MC-150
Urbana, IL 61801
e-mail: sofhani@uiuc.edu
Tubagus Furqon Sofhani has been in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning University of Illinois and REAL since 2003. His research focuses on the shift of planning paradigm in the transitional democratic countries stimulated by social movement of non-government organizations. Using diffusion of innovation and social learning theory, he highlights how the group of planner has initiated the change of planning forms from planning as societal guidance to planning as social transformation.
Furqon finished his first degree (BA) at the Department of Regional and City Planning, Institute of Technology Bandung (ITB) Indonesia in 1991. After working on local economic development projects in Indonesia he earned a master's degree from the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague in 1995. Following Indonesia’s economic and political crisis in 1998, he was involved in action research and advocacy to encourage participatory planning, community empowerment, and fiscal decentralization in several regions in Indonesia. Before joining the University of Illinois, he was a faculty member of ITB.
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Ph.D Candidate
Department of Urban & Regional Planning
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
220 Davenport Hall
607 S. Mathews Ave. MC-150
Urbana, IL 61801
e-mail: cesilva@uiuc.edu
I am Brazilian. Yes, I like soccer and carnival. And I agree: Brazilian women are the most beautiful in the world. Corruption and violence? They are everywhere, look around!
But you may know something else about my country. It is an unfair society: the country's wealth is concentrated in a few hands and the shameful Brazilian income distribution indexes show the disparity not only among families but also among our regions. This is my research motivation.
So, my main interest is regional development. In my dissertation work I have tried to approach the problem from three distinct -- but complementary-- perspectives. First, I propose a model where the incentives and communication flows within a corporation play a crucial role for the decision about the manufacturing plant location. Then, my second research effort, a paper still in progress, investigates the extent to which the industrial sectors linked with agriculture activities are those that drive the industrial development of a given agricultural region. Finally, the third paper – also still incomplete – analyzes the effects of the international trade on the Brazilian economy, trying to measure the effects on rich and poor Brazilian states coming from trading with rich and poor countries. The results are evaluated in the context of the existing discussion in the economic literature about the needs (or not) of including economies of scale and product differentiation into the traditional Heckscher-Ohlin models.
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Ph.D Student
Department of Urban & Regional Planning
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
220 Davenport Hall
607 S. Mathews Ave. MC-150
Urbana, IL 61801
e-mail: aruddin2@uiuc.edu
A K M Riaz Uddin joined the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and REAL in fall 2006. He primary research interest is in Transportation and Regional Development. Especially he likes to explore how a particular kind of investment in transportation (e.g. local vis-à-vis regional) at a given system of city hierarchy tends to influence regional economic development. He is hoping to explore more in the stated area with Professor Geoffrey J D Hewings.
He received his Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in 2003. Before joining REAL-UIUC he worked for Planning Commission in Bangladesh as a Transport Economist. He also worked in the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) and the Unnayan Shamannay. His most desired moments are those spent with his family and friends.
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Ph.D Student
Department of Urban & Regional Planning
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
220 Davenport Hall
607 S. Mathews Ave. MC-150
Urbana, IL 61801
e-mail: pwaland2@uiuc.edu
Paksi Walandouw joined the University of Illinois and REAL in Spring 2005. He is working with regional models, especially the models that characterize the effect of spatial interaction to the economic and demographic activities. Previously, he was working with regional income convergence model and public investment impact on the economics and demographic activities.
Paksi earned his Bachelor in Economics from Department of Economics in Faculty Economics University of Indonesia, Jakarta, in 2001, and Master of Arts in Economics and Public Policy from Graduate School of Public Policy in Kyung Hee University, Suwon Campus, in 2004. In Jakarta, Indonesia, he worked as a lecturer in the Department of Economics in Faculty Economics University of Indonesia, and as a researcher in Demographic Institute in Faculty Economics University of Indonesia. Economics issues, especially regional economics issues in Indonesia, like income distribution, public capital outlays, regional tax, and regional specific behavior, were his primary interest, while he worked in the university. As a lecturer, he taught several subjects in economics, like microeconomics, macroeconomic, econometrics and statistics.
He enjoys reading, traveling, hanging out, watching movies, and filmmaking.
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Ph.D Candidate
Department of Urban & Regional Planning
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
220 Davenport Hall
607 S. Mathews Ave. MC-150
Urbana, IL 61801
e-mail: yuxiao@uiuc.edu
Yu is a doctoral student in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include regional economic development and regional science. She is doing research in both Regional Economics Applications Laboratory (REAL) and Regional Economics and Public Policy (REAP) team. In REAL, She works with Professor Geoffrey Hewings and other colleagues on integrating REAL's Chicago Regional Econometric and Input-Output Model (CREIM) with Professor Anas's RELU-TRANS model developed at the State University of New York at Buffalo. In REAP, she works with Professor Edward Feser and other colleagues on a project for the Middle American Earthquake (MAE) Center to assess the economic impacts of earthquakes.
Before joining REAL, she worked on Land Use Evolution & Impact Assessment Model (LEAM), focusing on building fiscal impact models that assess costs and benefits on local government due to land use change.
Yu got her BS degree in Urban Studies and Regional Planning from Peking University, China and her Master of Urban Planning Degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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