UW Economics Professor Eric Zivot and alumna Nina Sidneva have been awarded the inaugural Rollie Lamberson Medal for the most outstanding paper in natural resource modeling published within the last two years. Their paper, "Evaluating the Impact of Environmental Policy on the Trend Behavior of US Emissions of Nitrogen Oxides and Volatile Organic Compounds" was published in the journal Natural Resource Modeling in September 2014.
In the paper, Sidneva and Zivot employ time-series methodology to assess the effectiveness of policy related to trend behavior of the air pollutants nitrogen oxide and volatile organic compounds. Encarna Esteban, of the University of Zaragoz in Spain, was also awarded for her paper "The Role of Groundwater-Dependent Ecosystems in Groundwater Management".
Roland H. "Rollie" Lamberson, for whom the award is named, is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Humboldt State University in California and Executive Secretary of the Resource Modeling Association (RMA). The RMA brings together applied mathematicians, applied population biologists, fisheries scientists, and resource economists to discuss the application of models to resource management. The award is given in recognition of Professor Lamberson's contributions to the field of natural resource modeling.
Eric Zivot is the Robert R. Richards Chaired Professor in Economics at UW, and also serves as Co-Director of the MS Program in Computational Finance and Risk Management. He is Adjunct Professor of Finance at the Foster Business School, Adjunct Professor of Statistics, and Adjunct Professor of Applied Mathematics. He received his PhD in Economics from Yale University in 1982 and joined the faculty at UW in 1983.
Nina Sidneva (UW Economics PhD '08) is Senior Treasury Analyst at Starbucks in Commodity and FX Risk Management. In this capacity she develops and implements econometric models to forecast commodity prices.Prior to this, Nina was Principal Economist at Seattle City Light, where she served as the technical lead on rate-setting and design, bond issuance and other economic and financial analyses. She is Secretary of the Seattle Economics Council.