Notre Dame receives $10 million to fund new faculty positions for Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities | News | Notre Dame News | University of Notre Dame Skip To Content Skip To Navigation Skip To Search University of Notre Dame Notre Dame News Experts ND in the News Subscribe About Us Home Contact Search Menu Home › News › Notre Dame receives $10 million to fund new faculty positions for Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities Notre Dame receives $10 million to fund new faculty positions for Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities Published: May 10, 2018 Author: Sue Ryan The University of Notre Dame’s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO), a research center in the Department of Economics that works to reduce domestic poverty and improve lives through evidence-based programs and policies, has received $10 million to fund two new faculty positions and grow the center’s Social Innovation Fund. “We are humbled by this generous support and honored to continue to fight poverty in this uniquely Notre Dame endeavor,” said William Evans, LEO co-founder, economics department chair and Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Economics. “Ultimately, this generosity will allow us to identify more programs that lift families out of poverty and will significantly broaden the impact of LEO’s work.” “The Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities is rapidly gaining prominence for conducting research that helps policymakers and others better understand and address the causes of poverty in our nation,” said Thomas G. Burish, Charles and Jill Fischer Provost at Notre Dame. “We are exceedingly grateful for the continued support of the lab and its mission of working to be a force for good in the world.”   Evans anticipates launching the search for the two new faculty positions this spring. “Over the past five years, LEO has transformed from a simple idea into a leading poverty-reduction impact lab. We now work to create evidence-based programs and policies in more than two dozen communities from Anchorage to Austin. This funding will propel our efforts forward by bringing world-class scholars to campus to help fulfill our mission and broaden our impact,” he said. LEO has recently created its Social Innovation Fund, which will provide seed capital to support pilot projects and fund the scaling-up of programs that have shown early evidence of promising interventions. The Social Innovation Fund will also invest in evaluations of scaled-up versions of anti-poverty programs that have demonstrated impact in order to test them more rigorously while evaluating their impact in different environments and with different populations. Evans and James Sullivan, Rev. Thomas J. McDonagh, C.S.C., Associate Professor of Economics, founded LEO five years ago to improve lives and reduce poverty in the United States. LEO focuses its impact evaluations on innovative and scalable initiatives, and utilizes evaluation results to inform programming and influence public policy in the areas of criminal justice, self-sufficiency, education, health, and housing and homelessness. Posted In: Research Home Experts ND in the News Subscribe About Us Related October 05, 2022 Astrophysicists find evidence for the presence of the first stars October 04, 2022 NIH awards $4 million grant to psychologists researching suicide prevention September 29, 2022 Notre Dame, Ukrainian Catholic University launch three new research grants September 27, 2022 Notre Dame, Trinity College Dublin engineers join to advance novel treatment for cystic fibrosis September 22, 2022 Climate-prepared countries are losing ground, latest ND-GAIN index shows For the Media Contact Office of Public Affairs and Communications Notre Dame News 500 Grace Hall Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Pinterest © 2022 University of Notre Dame Search Mobile App News Events Visit Accessibility Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube LinkedIn