Shagnik Chakravarty
Pre-Doctoral Scholar
Shagnik is a pre-doctoral research fellow at the Haas School of Business. He holds a BA in Economics from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, and an MSc in Economics for Development from the University of Oxford. Prior to starting this position, Shagnik worked as a research assistant at Oxford, working on issues related to energy infrastructure and development in Africa. His research interests lie in behavioral economics, development economics, and environmental economics.
Canishk Naik
Postdoc
Canishk is a behavioral and public economist whose research examines how governments can optimally provide assistance and social protection to help the most vulnerable meet their basic needs. His work focuses particularly on the role of psychological factors—such as mental health and behavioral biases—in shaping behavior and policy effectiveness. He received a PhD in economics from the LSE in 2025.
Karin Li
PhD student
Karin is a PhD student in Finance at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business whose research interests lie in a broad range of financial and economic questions. Prior to joining the PhD program she worked with Prof. Ulrike Malmendier on joint research and as a research assistant. In parallel, Karin has also worked in the insurance industry for many years, most recently in risk management. She holds an M.Sc. in Economics from the University of Munich and a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and Management from the Universität der Bundeswehr München.
Clint Hamilton
PhD student
Clint is a PhD candidate in Finance at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, focusing on research in Behavioral Finance and Economics. He previously obtained a B.A. in Economics and Applied Mathematics and, subsequently, earned an M.S. in Business Administration at Berkeley. Clint has worked as a pre-doctoral fellow and later as a graduate student researcher under Professor Ulrike Malmendier. His research has touched on behavioral corporate finance with a focus on executive compensation and decision-making and household finance with an emphasis on political polarization and household beliefs. Before starting his PhD, Clint attended the Open Source Macroeconomics Laboratory, where he learned advanced computational and high-performance computing techniques. Outside of his research, Clint is dedicated to diversity and equity, mentoring students and speaking to student groups about the path to academia in finance and economics.
Qianyi Liu
Scholar
Qianyi Liu is a first-year PhD student at the Department of Economics. His research interests revolve around applying insights from psychology and behavioral economics to inform public policies, economic development, and poverty. He is the first recipient of a doctoral summer research appointment sponsored by the Center.
Colby Chambers
Incoming PhD student
Colby Chambers is a recent graduate of the honors economics program at the University of British Columbia. For the past two years, he has worked under Dan Benjamin, Kristen Cooper, Miles Kimball, and Ori Heffetz at the National Bureau of Economic Research using survey data to study well-being. As he enters Berkeley’s economics PhD program this fall, he is interested in combining insights from labor and behavioral economics to conduct research in the economics of discrimination. He is honored to receive an O’Donnell Center Fellowship and looks forward to contributing to the center’s research and broader mission.
William Radaic
Incoming PhD student
William is an incoming PhD student in the Deparment of Economics at UC Berkeley. Since 2024, he has been a Pre-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Economics at Harvard University, working under the supervision of Prof. Matthew Rabin. He received a BA in Economics from the Sao Paulo School of Economics – FGV and a Bachelor of Law from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2023. He is especially interested in theoretically-inclined Behavioral Economics and Political Economy.
Bihai Gao
Pre-Doctoral Scholar
Bihai Gao is a predoctoral fellow at the Haas School of Business. He received his B.A. in finance from Zhejiang University in 2023 and M.S. in economics from New York University in 2025. His research interests lie in applied microeconomics, including labor economics, the economics of education, and industrial organization. In his spare time, he enjoys playing tennis with friends.
Pietro Risso
Pre-Doctoral Scholar
Pietro serves as a pre-doctoral fellow at the Haas School of Business. He earned a BA in Economics and Society, graduating summa cum laude from Sciences Po, Paris (’22), and later completed a BA in Economics with honors at the University of California, Berkeley (’24). Before assuming his current role, Pietro contributed as a research assistant at UC Berkeley, focusing on how job loss impacts health outcomes, collaborating with Professor Benjamin Schoefer and MIT PhD Candidate Shakked Noy. Pietro’s academic interests span across behavioral economics, labor economics, and public economics.