Simone Matecna graduated from the University of California Berkeley with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Peace and Conflict Studies in 2020. At Berkeley, Simone carried out a randomized controlled experiment, working with local school districts to evaluate the impact of a primary caregiver’s payday on the cognitive function of small children. After graduating, Simone worked for three years as a predoctoral research fellow to Dr. Amitabh Chandra at Harvard Kennedy School, where she used Medicare claims to show meaningful differences in levels of emergency department (ED) use among former physicians compared to matched controls for lower-acuity visits, testing a central hypothesis in health economics regarding the role of patient education in preventing avoidable health care. In 2023, Simone was named an awardee of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Her research interests lie in impact evaluation focused on reducing barriers to acute care for marginalized communities, particularly related to child and maternal health.