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ILR Announces Future of Work Fellowship Program

A generous $1.6 million philanthropic gift to the ILR School has established the Future of Work Fellowship program. The program will create opportunities to enhance research at ILR by bringing in early career research on postdoctoral fellowships to work with ILR faculty on innovative research projects.

"The Future of Work Fellowship program gives us opportunities to support innovative researchers across disciplines and fields,” said Alexander Colvin, Ph.D. '99, ILR’s Kenneth F. Kahn '69 Dean and the Martin F. Scheinman '75, 'M.S. '76, Professor of Conflict Resolution. “This program lets us fund important research areas, support and enhance the work of our faculty, and offer academic hospitality to promising early-career researchers here at Cornell.”

The Future of Work Fellowship program will support three to four postdoctoral fellows, as well as one doctoral fellow, each year for five years. A key feature of the program will be the partnering of fellows with ILR faculty who will provide mentorship and collaboration opportunities.

The first cohort of fellows is in the process of being selected. The inaugural group of three postdoctoral fellows will be working with: Professor Sarosh Kuruvilla as part of the New Conversations Project; Associate Professor Emily Zitek as part of ILR’s Expo Lab; and Professors Michele Belot and Philipp Kircher doing research as part of the Labor Dynamics Institute.

"The postdoc and current members of the Expo Lab will benefit from each other's research productivity, training and knowledge, energy, and collaboration,” Zitek said. “The lab gains the benefits of a faculty-level scholar and the postdoc gains experience and a stepping stone to a tenure-track faculty job.”

Kuruvilla has already filled his two-year position with Joy Das, who recently earned a doctorate from Louisiana State University and studies trade.

“The post-doc that we were able to hire through the ILR’s schools Future of Work Fellowship has been crucial in our ability to complete projects to meet the deadline by funding agencies,” Kuruvilla said. “The post-doc funded by the Future of Work Fellowship significantly enhances our ability to do more cutting edge research that is key to growing our program, and enhancing Cornell’s reputation in the global supply chain space.”

More information on the Future of Work Fellowship program is available here.

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