Founded and led by Nobel laureate and Faculty Director, Professor Michael Kremer, the Development Innovation Lab (DIL) is an affiliate of the Development Economics Center at the University of Chicago. Formally inaugurated in the spring of 2022, DIL brings researchers of various fields together with governments, firms and non-profits to use the tools of economics to identify, test, refine and scale innovations with the potential to benefit millions of people in low- and middle-income countries.
DIL is looking for a Research Assistant (RA) who will work closely with the research team at DIL to perform a variety of tasks. The position hours can range from 5 to 37.5 hours of work per week, depending on the candidate’s availability.
Candidates with research experience are strongly preferred, especially those with experience in Stata, R, Python or Matlab. This position will support the following:
Task: JJM Dashboard Scraping
We need to collect a significant amount of information from a public government dashboard. This requires a student with some CS or data analytics background.
Details: We have some pre-existing code written in Python with Selenium, which needs to be updated, modified, and executed. We also have some initial ideas about the structures of the POST requests, which could be a faster alternative, although it will require some tinkering with a client-side hashing script buried somewhere.
Depending on student ability and interest, after scraping some analysis and writeup of the data collected would be great too.
Qualifications
- Currently a student at the University of Chicago
- Pursuing Computer Science/Engineering/Economics or a related field
- Competence with Microsoft office/ Google doc, sheets etc.
- Excellent time management and organizational skills; ability to successfully complete assigned tasks and meet deadlines, as required
- Good communication skills with attention to detail
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience working with web scraping and data analysis tools
- Interest in global development