My name is Pratik Mhatre. I have a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Science program from Texas A&M University, College Station. I also have a Masters Degree in Public Policy from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, and an undergraduate degree in Architecture from PiCA, University of Mumbai, India.
My current research interests are in understanding how education and early-life conditions impact later-life health and cognition in nationally-representative samples. I hope to better understand early-life interventions to improve the long-term lives of future older Americans.
I continue to be interested in the linkages between educational outcomes in the neighborhoods they are located in to examine subsequent neighborhood or demographic changes, if any. I am deeply interested in the relationship between public policy and the environment, especially the intersection of public education & health policies and their impact on the socioeconomic characteristics of the neighborhood/community. I remain curious about how mindsets and college access/readiness initiatives affect academic outcomes and in efforts to explore the impact of educator mindsets, school norms, and classroom climate on students’ learning mindsets.
Currently, I’m working at the Population Research Center (PRC) in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. I am the Director of Research Operations - Education Studies for Healthy Aging Research (EdSHARe).
In my role, I lead the data collection and dissemination of two large longitudinal cohort studies — High School & Beyond (HS&B 1980) and National Longitudinal Study (NLS-72) funded by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Currently, we’re working with NIH on a supplemental grant to understand how and why education, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic and biological processes come together to shape later-life cognitive functioning and decline specifically for Alzheimer’s and other related dementias.
Previously, I was the Chief Operating Officer/Scientific Director of the Texas Behavioral Science and Policy Institute for strategic planning, culture-building, and coordination of daily operations at the Institute and advised research teams on intervention design.
I managed research teams involved in data collection, research participant recruiting, budgeting & contracting processes, and grant-writing for projects that examine the impact of teacher & faculty mindsets, school norms, and classroom climate on students’ learning mindsets.
In my previous role at the PRC, I was the Study Director for the National Study of Learning Mindsets, the largest-ever randomized controlled trial of growth mindset interventions in the United States. This study is designed to understand which kinds of students, in which kinds of classrooms, and which kinds of schools are most likely to benefit from online exercises designed to foster learning mindsets.
Before my current position, I worked at the Institute for Public School Initiatives (IPSI) housed within the College of Education and also at the University of Texas at Austin. I was the Project Director for the To College and Beyond GEAR UP grant serving eight Greater Austin and San Antonio school districts. Previously, I was primarily responsible for research and data analysis for the Texas GEAR UP State Project. I also coordinated data collection and subsequent analysis for the four selected GEAR UP school districts in Texas and the Texas Education Agency (TEA).
Previously, at the Public Policy Research Institute (PPRI), I was involved in program evaluation, needs assessment, survey methodology, SAS programming, and GIS analysis. I conducted SAS programming and report-making for surveys of nearly 240 school districts in Texas for the Department of Health and Human Services. I was primarily responsible for sampling and preparing maps for survey purposes using GIS and Census data for Texas-Mexico Caetano Border Alcohol and Drug Survey Project. I have analyzed qualitative data to examine the extent and pattern of disproportionate minorities in the juvenile justice system in Texas using SPSS Text Analysis Tools. I have gained extensive knowledge and experience in coding and programming surveys using LimeSurvey, QDS, and Scantron.
While at PPRI, I partnered with Dept. Of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at TAMU to conduct data management, analysis, and reporting for trends and patterns of 211 calls in Texas for the Department of Homeland Security.
I am trained in program evaluation and public policy analysis of planning, health, and education programs with the help of analytical tools like Stata, SAS, SPSS, R, and HLM. I have used GIS mapping and programming tools extensively, including spatial modeling techniques for analyzing social and economic change with tools such as ArcGIS and spatial statistics using ArcGIS, R, and GeoDa.
My graduate school research has examined the economic and social effects of remediation of contaminated properties. I examined the impact of redevelopment plans and policies on sociodemographic changes in communities and neighborhoods, focusing on gentrification, brownfield remediation, and revitalization as contemporaneous changes from physical changes. I like studying gentrification and the impact of technology and culture on the evolution of urban spaces. I am interested in local economic development and how public-private partnerships can be leveraged for regional growth with the help of technology, innovation, and nurturing competitive advantages.
My expertise includes project management, strategy planning, culture building, monitoring and evaluation, budgeting and financial planning, and data management.