Global Research Group
Success Stories
Advancing rights of young people with disabilities
In partnership with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the International Solutions Group (ISG), a GRG team contributed to a critical global study on youth and disability. The study identified positive practices states have adopted to advance the rights of young persons with disabilities in two primary areas: (1) access to sexual and reproductive health rights and services and (2) prevention and response to gender-based violence. The GRG team produced in-depth research reports and summaries on state practices in Brazil, Israel and Pacific Island Countries and Territories, and drafted a subsection for the report on best practices in humanitarian settings. The team also conducted interviews with key stakeholders and produced interview memos for ISB clients.
“The students’ report provided us with new insights from their case studies. The results of their analyses made us reconsider our approaches and informed UNFPA’s future policy decisions and strategies on this critical and often overlooked issue.” – Leyla Sharafi, Gender and Youth Specialist, UNFPA
Cybersecurity research for Microsoft
Since GRG’s founding in 2011, Microsoft has commissioned the services of consultant teams each year for a wide variety of complex and large-scale research projects. In 2018, the team produced an analysis of the factors influencing the rise of new global data powers (data tigers) and identified which countries are likely to emerge as major players in this landscape. The team created a Data Tiger Probability Index that scored and evaluated 162 countries for their global data hub capacities.
To make this index, students examined elements of systemic cybersecurity risk, researched nine country case studies, and reverse–engineered the attributes that made Ireland a technology hub. In a second GRG report for Microsoft, a team used financial systemic risk as an analogy for a hypothetical systemic cybersecurity risk regime. The report addressed how cybersecurity may be defined and analyzed in terms of risk and identified high-risk institutions and countries as well as mitigation strategies. Both reports received praise for their keen insights and thorough analysis and were said to rival, and in some cases, exceed the quality of deliverables from large-scale consulting firms.
