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Sam B

- Research Program Mentor

PhD at University of Southern California (USC)

Expertise

microeconomics (general), data science/analysis

Bio

I am a PhD candidate in economics at the University of Southern California. My research focuses on the economics of the digital era. Among many other things, I am interested in markets facilitated by the internet, open source innovation, and how online communities curate public goods. If I'm not traversing the research world, you can probably find me surfing, listening to Deftones, or breaking my Arch Linux installation.

Project ideas

Project ideas are meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

How do Managers Structure Open Source Software Projects?

Owners of open source software (OSS) projects set up code repositories with the hope that others users will find them useful/interesting and possibly contribute to improve the project. What makes an OSS project successful? What are relevant measures of project 'success'? Are there certain features of the project (e.g. documentation, testing frameworks) or maintainer actions (e.g. responding to user questions) that are associated with project success?

Coding skills

R, Python, Julia, LaTeX

Teaching experience

I have done both private tutoring and served as a teaching assistant for high school and undergraduate students. I have 7 years of tutoring experience and 6 years of experience as a teaching assistant. I have tutored/taught algebra, calculus, microeconomics, macroeconomics, econometrics, statistics, and probability.

Credentials

Work experience

Harvard Business School (2023 - Current)
Postdoctoral Fellow

Education

University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)
BA Bachelor of Arts (2013)
Economics
Tufts University
MS Master of Science (2016)
Economics
University of Southern California (USC)
PhD Doctor of Philosophy (2022)
Economics

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