At the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, we are recruiting two postdoc positions to work with a great team of collaborators (a.o., myself, Donald Moynihan, Nada Eissa and Andrew Zeitlin) to design large-scale RCTs in partnership with federal agencies (across different policy fields).

The positions follow a novel partnership model between the Office of Evaluation Sciences and the McCourt School – postdocs will be housed at both institutions (i.e., 4 days a week in the federal government and 1 day/week at Georgetown).

Application deadline is Feb-28.

Description

The Postdoctoral Fellows will be part of the ‘Developing Rigorous Program Evaluation Opportunities in Partnership with the Federal Government’ project, funded by Arnold Ventures. They will work closely with the project’s PI (Sebastian Jilke), co-PIs (Nada Eissa, Donald Moynihan and Andrew Zeitlin) and partners at the Office of Evaluation Sciences (OES) at the General Services Administration and other U.S. Federal agencies.

The Postdoctoral Fellows will each be part of two project teams that will work directly with agency partners to develop program evaluation opportunities using Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT). Specifically, Fellows will spend approximately 80% of their time embedded in OES and agency partners to lead the conception and design of program evaluation projects with important long-term social consequences. The remaining time will be spent at Georgetown University (about 1 day a week).

Both positions will be based in Washington DC, with flexibility based on the COVID-19 pandemic. Preferred starting date is June-01, 2021. Both positions are for a 14-month period, with the potential for extension subject to external funding based on the RCT projects.

Responsibilities 

The Postdoctoral Fellows will each:

• Drive the design of two large-scale RCT projects, in partnership with agency collaborators, OES and the project’s PI/ co-PIs;
• Work directly with agency partners to plan the design and rigorous testing of program interventions;
• Perform data analysis and interpretation;
• Distill findings into reports, policy memos and academic publications;
• Present project designs at government and external conferences and meetings;
• Develop, in partnership with the project’s PI/ co-PIs, fully-designed funding proposals on the basis of RCT projects.

Qualifications 

• Ph.D. in and research experience with public policy, economics, public administration, sociology, quantitative social sciences or a related field (ABDs are welcome to apply if they expect to complete their Ph.D. before project start).

The ideal candidate will have a mix of the following qualifications:

• Extensive knowledge of program evaluation designs (especially RCTs) and statistical analysis strategies;
• Experience in conducting high-quality randomized evaluations in field settings;
• Ability to think creatively about the design of strong program interventions that are feasible within specific federal programs;
• Expertise in one or more U.S. domestic policy sectors;
• Experience in working with administrative data;
• Experience in working with government programs, policies and/or operations;
• Advanced competency in at least one data analytical programming language (e.g., Stata, R, SAS, Python);
• Data warehousing/ management skills (e.g., using SQL) is a plus;
• Commitment to open science and experience in drafting pre-registration documents and/or pre-analysis plans; 
• Strong project management skills;
• Strong written and oral communication skills.

Application materials

• Curriculum Vitae
• Cover letter (no more than 2 pages)
• 1 representative publication (or working paper)
• 3 letters of recommendation (i.e., references’ names, institutional affiliations, phone numbers and email addresses should be provided as a separate document; reference letters will be solicited for final candidates only)