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Two New Senior Researchers Join Mathematica’s Staff

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (April 21, 2009)—Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., recently announced the appointments of Marian Vaillant Wrobel of Wellesley, Mass., and Nancy Cole, a resident of Waltham, Mass., as senior researchers.

Wrobel, who has a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard, specializes in the application of behavioral economics to evaluations of health programs, including framing of health plan choices for Medicare beneficiaries, as well as analysis of Medicare payment systems and prescription drug policies. She comes to Mathematica from Ideas42, a think tank at Harvard University’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science. She was also a senior research director with the Brookings Institution and a senior health economist at Abt Associates, where she worked for more than 10 years. She has published in Health Care Financing Review, Health Services Research, Journal of Public Economics, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, and Inquiry.

Cole, who has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles, has 15 years of experience in program evaluation for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, including studies of the nation’s major nutrition assistance programs—food stamps (now, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), WIC, the National School Lunch Program, and the Child and Adult Care Food Program. Her areas of expertise include eligibility determinations, food stamp benefit redemption patterns, computer matching and record linkage, and nutrition research. She comes to Mathematica from Abt Associates, Inc., where she was an analyst and project director. Her work has been published in the Journal of Human Resources. 

Mathematica, a nonpartisan research firm, conducts high quality, objective policy research and surveys to improve public well-being. Its clients include federal and state governments, foundations, and private-sector and international organizations. The employee-owned company, with offices in Princeton, N.J., Ann Arbor, Mich., Cambridge, Mass., Oakland, Calif., and Washington, D.C., has conducted some of the most important studies of health care, nutrition, education, welfare, employment, and early childhood policies and programs in the U.S.