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With the digitization of information, cyberspace is a developing network that’s changing how we live. In 2009, the first digital currency, Bitcoin, was invented.  Bitcoin has been called a “decentralized virtual currency” by some economists, due to the fact that it is transferred from one user to another, called peer-to-peer or P2P, without the use of any central bank.  Sitong Chen ’16, with Professor of Economics Christophre Georges, worked this summer on an Emerson project, “Analysis of the Internet-born Currency: The Birth of Bitcoin.”

Africa is home to some of the fastest developing economies and up-and-coming global leaders, as Ivy Phoebe Akumu ’15, an economics major, knows. This summer, Akumu is a corporate business intern with the Commercial Bank of Africa Ltd. (CBA), one of East Africa’s largest privately owned banks. Her internship is located in Upper Hill, Nairobi, Kenya, and is sponsored through the Summer Internship Support Fund.

Dima Kaigorodov '16 is one of a long list of students who have interned or are currently working with IOS Partners including Amy Marchesi ’13, Eric Boole ’13, Fletcher Wright, Jimmy Nguyen ’14, Emily Rivera ’16, Meg Alexander ’15 and Adi Fracchia ’14. Katie McGuire ’11 started as an intern in the summer of 2010 and subsequently joined the company and started the Washington intern program. 

Although politicians sometimes get a bad rap, many are devoted to combating social injustices, as Matthew Creeden ’16 has discovered this summer. Creeden, an economics and government double major, is interning at EMILY’s List. EMILY’s List is a political action committee (PAC) in Washington, D.C., that helps elect pro-choice Democratic women to office, as Creeden explained.

Scheduling tours, organizing band members, and fighting off groupies is all in a day’s work for an artist manager. This summer, Max Newman ’16, an economics major, is getting hands-on experience in the music industry, interning in NYC with the support of the Daniel Fielding ’07 Internship Fund. He is working as an assistant for two artist management companies in the city: Post Hoc Management and Maine Road Management.

About one in every seven American men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime1. Combatting cancer is difficult, but one crucial step is early detection, which is made possible through screening examinations such as the Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) test. Philip Parkes ’17 is working with Professor of Biology Herm Lehman on a project titled “The Origins of Over-Testing: Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) Test” that is sponsored by a Levitt Summer Research Grant.

For his 2014 Levitt Summer Research Fellowship Grant, Adam Pfander ’16 is working with Professor of Economics Paul Hagstrom to examine the employment opportunities of immigrants during the “Great Recession” of 2007-08.  Pfander laid out three main goals for his project titled “Foreign-Born Labor Markets in Recession.”

Vulture funding, a term that refers to private entities investing in cheap, high-risk debt with the hopes of earning high returns when the debtor fails, can threaten the already vulnerable economies of poor countries.  As an example, Argentina has recently suffered losses due to vulture funding and is now recovering from the economic damage. This summer, Charles Allegar ’14 is interning with the Jubilee USA Network, an alliance of 75 U.S. organizations, 50 global partners and other members that challenge the actions of global financial authorities.

The economic crisis that began in 2007 triggered a sense of financial insecurity among big and small institutions as well as individual investors.  The housing bubble, subprime lending and deregulation were all thought to contribute to market instability.  Ru Jun Han ’14 believes another, more technological, component was also responsible.

Some Americans misunderstand the role of lobbying and its contribution to the political process.  The practice benefits advocacy groups, large and small, that want to inform and to have their opinions heard by government representatives. Nick Solano ’14 is working for Williams & Jensen PLLC, a government affairs law firm in Washington, D.C, and learning about that firm’s lobbying efforts.