Valeria Espinosa, who earned a Ph.D. in statistics at Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics at ITAM, collaborated with Donald B. Rubin, a statistics professor at Harvard, on a paper titled: “Did the military interventions in the Mexican drug war increase violence?”

The study analyzed data to estimate the effect of the military’s intervention on homicide rates in certain regions of Mexico. To calculate the effect, the study compared regions where there was military involvement with other regions where there was no involvement.

The study used the Rubin causal model to compare the homicide rate before the military interventions with the hypothetical rate for that same year assuming that no intervention would have occurred.

Espinosa was interviewed for an article that appeared in The New York Times under the headline, “Study Finds Mexican Troops Did Not Stem Drug-War Killings.”