Marcella Alsan, the Angelopoulos Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, has been awarded the Humboldt Research Award, an international prize in recognition of her academic record to date.
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation grants up to 100 Humboldt Research Awards each year to leading academics across disciplines “whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and beyond and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge academic achievements.” The Humboldt Research Award includes a €60,000 grant and an invitation to conduct a research project in collaboration with German scholars.
Alsan is an applied microeconomist working at the intersection of economics, medicine, and public health policy, with a particular focus on health inequality. She is affiliated with the Kennedy School’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy and the Center for International Development. Alsan previously won the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship for her work examining the legacies of discrimination and mistrust in perpetuating racial disparities in health. She is the first serving Kennedy School professor to be granted the Humboldt Research Award since 2002.