Current Furman Scholars

Third-Year Students 

 

Hannah Pittock '26

Hannah is interested in Antitrust law, competition policy, and consumer protection. During her 1L summer, she worked as a law clerk on Senator Amy Klobuchar's Judiciary Committee staff, focusing on antitrust and competition issues. This fall, she will extern with the Federal Trade Commission's Anticompetitive Practices I division before joining Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider as a summer associate in 2025. Prior to law school, Hannah worked at Morgan Stanley as a stock analyst covering the retail sector and publishing consumer economic research. She received her B.A. in 2020 from the University of Chicago in Political Science and Economics.

 

Micah Musser '26

Micah’s research interests include tort, national security, and procedure, especially in the context of technological change. He is particularly interested in how the law codes and responds to “harms” or “threats” posed by new technologies. He graduated summa cum laude from Georgetown University with a B.A. in Government. After undergrad, he worked for four years at a D.C.-based think tank, writing on AI and cybersecurity policy issues. At NYU, he has worked as an RA for Professors Mark Geistfeld, Helen Hershkoff, and Maggie Gardner (Cornell), and will be a TA for Professor Burt Neuborne’s Civil Procedure course in Fall 2024. He is a staff editor on Law Review. He spent his 1L summer as an intern for Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A and will spend his 2L summer at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.

 

Nina Sankey Russell '26

Nina's research focuses on empirical analysis of the modern U.S. corporation. Motivated by an interest in the economic and national security implications of U.S. corporate law, Nina is also pursuing a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence & Social Policy at UC Berkeley and has served as a staff member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Originally from Charlottesville, Virginia, Nina holds degrees from Yale University (B.A., Ethics, Politics, and Economics) and Tsinghua University (Masters, Global Affairs, Schwarzman Scholar). At NYU Law, Nina has worked as a research assistant for Professor Richard Brooks and Professor Robert Jackson, and will be a teaching assistant for Professor Brooks' Corporations course in Fall 2023.

 

Brianna Sturkey '26

Brianna graduated cum laude from Barnard College in 2020 with a dual degree in sociology and human rights. Prior to attending law school, she worked as a litigation paralegal at the New York Civil Liberties Union. There, she provided support to the legal director and senior staff attorneys for a wide-ranging docket of civil rights cases. Brianna’s research interests focus on exploring the intersection of urban policy and educational institutions as landowners. Specifically, she wants to examine to the role of universities as urban planners and help define their legal, socioeconomic, and ethical obligations to neighboring communities.

 

Second-Year Students

Zachary Lewis '27

Zach is interested in the historical origins of America’s criminal justice system and welfare state, and their relationship to the economy and labor market. He received his BA in Comparative Literature, with High Honors, from New York University in 2018. After graduating, Zach worked at a labor union in New York City and as a research assistant for Professor Adaner Usmani in the Department of Sociology at Harvard. Zach is currently pursuing a PhD in sociology at NYU, where his interests include crime and punishment, political sociology, labor and social movements, and inequality and social stratification.

 

Jess Robinson '27

Jess’s research employs a mixed methods approach to the study of criminal law, social networks, and the politics of expertise, social science, and technology. She holds a B.A. (2020) in Sociology and Political Science from the University of Chicago and an M.A. (2024) in Sociology from Columbia University, where she is currently also a PhD student. Previously, Jess worked as a Senior Data Analyst at CORNERS: The Center for Neighborhood Engaged Research and Science, where she collaborated with community-based violence intervention organizations in Chicago.

 

 

Eva Yguico '27

Eva is interested in the philosophical foundations of criminal law, along with other issues in moral, political, and social philosophy. She is currently pursuing a PhD in philosophy at Harvard University, where her dissertation asks: What would a just system of criminal law look like? And what lessons, if any, does that teach us about our present system of criminal law? Before starting her PhD, Eva graduated summa cum laude from UCLA with a B.A. in philosophy. She also worked as a legal intern for the Open Society Foundations and the CA Superior Courts. 

 

 

Cecilia Zhou '27

Cecilia’s research interests center around ontological issues in art, technology, and intellectual property law. Her article “Real World, Real Time,” on historical scientific instruments, is forthcoming in a special issue of RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics. Cecilia holds an MPhil in History of Art from the University of Cambridge, where she was the Paul Williams Scholar at Emmanuel College. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with an AB in History of Art & Architecture and English. 

 

 

First-Year Students

Reuben Kadushin '28

Reuben’s research explores the intellectual and institutional history of Latin American jurists’ theories of economic and political sovereignty, social property, corporatism, and state-led development. He is interested in examining the extent to which these legal and political frameworks shaped and circulated within Non-Aligned Movement states during the global 1960s. He earned his B.A. in Political Sociology with a minor in English Literature from Swarthmore College, graduating with Highest Honors. At Swarthmore, he was awarded the Oak and Ivy Award and was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. His honors thesis analyzed the relationship between anti-communism and state-sponsored indigenismo in the immediate aftermath of the Mexican Revolution. As a Mellon Mays Fellow, he also conducted research on the political thought of W.E.B. Du Bois during the Cold War, culminating in a peer-reviewed article published in the October 2024 issue of Science & Society. Reuben is currently pursuing a JD at NYU Law and a Ph.D. in History at New York University, where he is affiliated with the Department of History and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He can be reached at: Rk5187@nyu.edu.

 

Brandon Liu '28

Brandon studies the effects of artificial intelligence on administrative decision-making, discrimination, labor, and the courts. He is also a PhD student in Information Science at Cornell Tech, advised by Professors James Grimmelmann and Solon Barocas. Previously, he was Head of Engineering at Blue Rose research, where he applied machine learning to political message testing to advance progressive politics. He also lived in India for four years, where he developed and deployed technology for tuberculosis care with Everwell Health Solutions and spent a year living with farmers and Gandhian activists in rural north India. He studied development studies at SOAS, political sociology at the LSE, and received his undergraduate degree in computer science from Harvard.

 

Annabelle W. Tao '28

Annabelle is interested in all things fire, from prescribed fire regulations to natural disaster insurance. They received an A.B. (2021) in philosophy, with highest honors, from Harvard University and then spent a year working in prescribed and cultural fire in California and Australia. Annabelle is currently pursuing a PhD in philosophy at NYU, focusing on philosophy of ecology and environmental ethics. They also collaborate with the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford on reports about prescribed fire policy.