Dr. Alberto Ortega is an Assistant Professor at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. His current work focuses on the causes and structural factors that lead to risky behaviors and explores how public policy can mitigate the adverse consequences for vulnerable and low-income populations. This research includes contributions in the areas of substance use, mental health, crime, and policing. He is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a research affiliate at the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities at the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Ortega was also an Emerging Poverty Scholars Fellow at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an NSF Diversity Initiative for Tenure in Economics Fellow, and an American Economic Association Summer Program Fellow and mentor.
He is a member of the Policing Enforcement and Justice working group at the Cook Center.