Cade Lawson who is a native Atlantan chose Georgia Tech because he was excited for the opportunity to be a part of the next wave of economists and social science researchers who are finding new ways to infuse the data-driven technologies of the past decade with traditional theories that have existed for hundreds of years.
Why did you choose Georgia Tech and the School of Economics?
I was a huge fan of Georgia Tech sports well before I came to school here, so being admitted was a dream come true. I chose Economics because I was excited for the opportunity to be a part of the next wave of economists and social science researchers who are finding new ways to infuse the data-driven technologies of the past decade with traditional theories that have existed for hundreds of years.
It is incredibly exciting to finally have tools to make findings about the ways people behave that are backed by facts and not intuition. Economics at Tech was the perfect place for that given the school’s reputation for pushing the progress of technology and the many opportunities to be involved in hands-on research with industry leaders.
Have you participated in any research projects? If so, describe them and your role in the project.
I have done undergraduate research with Dr. Omar Asensio for over a year now, focusing on the applications of big data and machine learning to energy and environmental policy. Most recently I have been working on code validation and written analysis for a paper on the efficacy of marginal pricing strategies and behavioral interventions at electric vehicle charging stations, or more simply put trying to figure out if increasing the cost of charging as time goes on is an effective energy-saving strategy.
I have also worked on projects using natural language processing to categorize reviews on electric vehicle charging stations by doing some web scraping to compile new datasets and encoding ground-truth labels for the data we already have.
After graduation, Cade intends to pursue a Masters degree in Data Analytics from the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering.
Achievements:
- President of Ramblin’ Reck Club (the club dedicated to maintaining our mascot – a 1930 Ford Model A called the Ramblin’ Reck)
- 2019 Jump into STEM National Competition Winner
- Four-Time Faculty Honors
- Treasurer of Ivan Allen College Student Advisory Board
- Two time GT 1000 Team Leader for the ECON section
- Three time Teaching Assistant for various ECON courses
