Nuole (Lula) Chen

Research Scientist

Lula is a Research Scientist at MIT GOV/LAB, where she currently works on projects about trust, public goods, technology in government, and Covid-19, often focusing on the roles and attitudes of bureaucrats.  She specializes in policy evaluation using randomized controlled trials, causal inference, and quantitative methods. She also studies how individual biases affect group decision-making in foreign policy. During her doctoral studies, she served as a Methods Specialist with the Office of Evaluation Sciences at the U.S. General Services Administration and conducted research on taxation and public service delivery in Malawi as a part of the EGAP Metaketa Initiative. Prior to starting her PhD, she was a program manager at Sister Cities International for U.S.-Chinese-African trilateral municipal cooperation projects. Lula holds a BSFS in Comparative Studies and an MA in Security Studies from Georgetown University. She received her PhD in Political Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.