Vedavati Patwardhan is a quantitative researcher focusing on gender inequality and health in low and middle-income countries, with an emphasis on women's economic empowerment. Currently, Vedavati is a Research Consultant with the GENDER Project at the Center on Gender Equity and Health at the University of California, San Diego. In this role, she leads survey-based research on women's household decision-making agency, social norms, and economic inclusion in India. Her other research has examined global and regional disparities in health outcomes by gender and cash transfer programs in India. Previously, Vedavati was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. She holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy & Management from the University of Washington.

THE WORK-FAMILY RESEARCHERS NETWORK (WFRN) EARLY CAREER SCHOLAR MENTORING PROGRAM 

Lili Vargha is a sociologist and demographer, currently a Postdoctoral Researcher (Lecturer and Researcher) at the Institute of Sociology, University of Vienna. Previously, she was a Humboldt Research Fellow at Humboldt University of Berlin. Her research focuses on comprehensively measuring the gendered economy, with particular emphasis on the trajectories of unpaid care and domestic work, employment, and earnings as well as the direct and indirect costs of childbearing. Lili employs advanced statistical techniques and leverages diverse comparative data sources from around the world to investigate economic lifecycles, resources, and transfers using both cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches. She enjoys teaching courses on life courses, gender, quantitative methods and scientific writing.

THE WORK-FAMILY RESEARCHERS NETWORK (WFRN) EARLY CAREER SCHOLAR MENTORING PROGRAM 

Yongxin is a postdoc working in Emma Zang's lab. She received her PhD from the Brooks School of Public Policy at Cornell University in 2025, with concentration in sociology and a minor in demography. She was also a graduate student affiliate at the Center for the Study of Inequality (CSI) and the Cornell Population Center (CPC). She is broadly interested in family demography and health inequalities. Read more here.

Dr. Natasha Nemmers is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Gerontology at Wayne State University. She earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in Gerontology from the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Iowa State University. Her research examines how social and family networks—or the lack thereof—shape health and well-being outcomes for older adults and their care partners. While the vast majority of older adults prefer to age in place, growing numbers are attempting to do so with diminished family support due to demographic shifts including lower fertility rates, geographic dispersion, and family dissolution. Read more here.