Economics grad student Blake Allison was recently recognized with the Order of Merit Outstanding Scholarship award for demonstrating high intellectual achievement via individual or collaborative research, papers and/or presentations.

In Allison’s case, he has shown himself to be capable of all of the above, conducting individual research as well as co-authoring multiple papers—one of which was published in the esteemed Journal of Economic Theory—over the course of his five-year career at UCI. And though his own research revolves around constructing mathematical models to predict or explain certain human behaviors, he maintains a general love of learning and is curious about many other topics.

“My interests are fairly broad,” he says. “In general, I just like to learn. It is common for me to ask someone else about their work and be drawn into a complete discussion of the details and results.”

Allison will be taking this love of learning to the economics department at Emory University this August, where he has accepted a tenure-track position as an assistant professor.