By Sarah C. Baldwin
In spring 2025, nine Brandeis students served as Atkins Heller Undergraduate Fellows. Working with senior researchers from across Heller’s research centers and institutes, the fellows collected and analyzed data, assisted with manuscript writing and helped develop public policy reports. At the end of the semester, they presented their work at the Brandeis Undergraduate Research Symposium.
The program was launched in 2022 with a gift from Larry Atkins, PhD’85, a member of Heller’s Board of Advisors with a long career in health and social policy analysis, policy development and legislative representation. Directed by Associate Dean for Research Cindy Parks Thomas, PhD’00, it is designed to introduce Brandeis juniors and seniors to the research process and policy analysis. Students work six to eight hours a week and receive a stipend of up to $2,000 for the semester.
“The goal is to give the students a successful, positive research experience, to see what it’s like to work on a research team with senior faculty,” says Thomas, adding that “researchers love working with Brandeis students.” Thomas and the cohort of fellows gather each week to get to know each other and solve problems, if necessary.
The Atkins Heller Undergraduate Program has been so successful, Thomas says, that several students have continued working with their respective research mentors during the following summer or the academic year.
Student partners on faculty research
This year, fellows partnered with faculty in the Schneider Institutes for Health Policy and Research on a range of policy issues related to behavioral health, global health and health care systems research. Examples of their projects include:
- Working with Traci Green, director of Heller’s Opioid Policy Research Collaborative, Ella Chase ’26 conducted an environmental scan of harm-reduction resources at colleges and universities in Massachusetts and assisted with manuscript writing for a paper on public safety and public health partnerships in drug checking (i.e., testing technologies that reveal what is in an illicit substance) across the state.
- Danny DeMilia ’25 and Hana Klempnauer Miller ’25 collaborated with A.K. Nandakumar, director of the Institute for Global Health and Development, Monica Jordan, the institute’s project manager, and Collins Gaba, MS GHPM’24, a research associate there, to create process maps tracking changes in HIV services in the Dar es Salaam region of Tanzania between 2020 and 2025.
- With associate research professor Rajan Sonik, PhD’17, and colleagues, Sydney Duncan ’25 studied public health policies in each state during the COVID-19 pandemic. This work will enable Sonik and the team to control for outcomes from unrelated policies as they track the health impacts of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program policies during the same period.
- Toby Lipson ’26 worked with Karen Donelan, Stuart H. Altman Chair in U.S. Health Policy, on the pilot study she leads, Supporting Practices in Respecting Elders (SPIRE). Lipson administered surveys and collected and summarized data on the well-being of caregivers for older adults.
“The Atkins fellowship,” Donelan says, “offers a wonderful opportunity for undergraduates to explore research interests in more depth than is usually possible in a regular classroom project. Toby was interested in the health and well-being of family caregivers, and was able to participate in the collection of primary data and preliminary analysis of that data on a national study team.” Donelan adds, “We would love to make these fellowships available to a larger number of undergrads who are exploring research and professional careers!”