On Wednesday, December 10, 2025, the Massive Data Institute of the McCourt School of Public Policy will host the MDI Scholars Research Showcase Fall 2025. MDI Scholars will present their research in the Healey Family Student Center Social Room at Georgetown University from 1:00-2:30pm, followed by a reception.
The event begins with formal remarks by Massive Data Institute Director Lisa Singh followed by student project teams presenting “flash talks” — a 60-second summary of their research. After the flash talks, MDI Scholars project teams will present their research posters.
To learn more about the research projects that the MDI Scholars contributed to this semester, please check out: https://mdi.georgetown.edu/announcements/mdiresearch-fall2025/
Accommodations: This event is wheelchair accessible. Accommodation requests related to a disability should be made by December 3, 2025 to mdiresearch@georgetown.edu. A good faith effort will be made to fulfill requests made after December 3rd.
Transportation: Georgetown University is accessible for faculty, staff, students and visitors through many convenient transportation options, including our free university shuttle, public transportation, bicycling, carsharing and other means. Learn more about transportation options here. (new window)
See here (new window) (Interactive map) or here (new window) (PDF) for a Georgetown University campus map.
Taxi / Ridesharing: The recommended drop-off location is at the front gates of campus. Please inform your driver that your destination is Georgetown University or use the address 3700 O St. NW, Washington, DC 20057. Additional information on taxi / ride sharing is available here. (new window)
Visitor Parking: If you decide to drive to campus, please note there is construction happening on campus on the north side of campus. Visitor parking is available at Southwest Garage (Use 3611 Canal Road as the address for directions using GPS). Additional information on visitor parking is available here (new window).
About the MDI Scholars Program: The MDI Scholars program is an experiential learning opportunity for undergraduate and Master’s students to work on interdisciplinary research projects with professors and practitioners. These projects connect new forms of data and/or large-scale computing infrastructure to different public policy questions.
About the Massive Data Institute (MDI): At Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy, the Massive Data Institute (MDI) is an interdisciplinary research institute that connects experts across computer science, data science, public health, public policy, and social science to tackle societal scale issues and impact public policy in ways that improves people’s lives through responsible evidence-based research. For more information on MDI, please visit https://mdi.georgetown.edu/
MDI Scholar Research Showcase Poster Titles
(poster titles subject to change; titles updated as of December 9, 2025)
Complete collaborator information to come following the Showcase.
Continuing Development of a Private Set Intersection Tool for Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage
Victor Chen, College of Arts & Sciences, Computer Science and Economics ’27
Advisors: Vincent Dorie, Ph.D., Amy O’Hara, Ph.D.
Evaluating Direct and Indirect Signals for Migration in Bangladesh
Adrian David Frauca Arenas, College of Arts & Sciences, Computer Science and Mathematics ’27;
Izzy Coddington, College of Arts & Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics ’26;
Haiqa Sarosh Fatima, Walsh School of Foreign Service, Master of Arts in International Migration and Refugees ’25
Advisors: Lisa Singh, Ph.D., Katharine Donato, Ph.D., Ali Arab, Ph.D.
Who Gets the Green Subsidies? Measuring Firm Eligibility and Coverage Using Establishment-Level Data
Sazan Khalid, College of Arts & Sciences, Data Science & Analytics ’27
Advisors: Allison Koester, Ph.D.
Predicting Online Extremist Threats: A Theory-Based Machine Learning Approach Using Psycholinguistic Features
Anile Choice, College of Arts & Sciences, Data Science and Analytics ’25
Advisors: Ioannis Ziogas Ph.D.
Education Spending and Student Outcomes: Return on Investment
Alexa Nakanishi, College of Arts & Sciences, Mathematics and Justice & Peace Studies ’26, Data Science & Analytics, ’27
Advisors: Marguerite Roza, Ph.D., Maggie Cicco, Ph.D.
Mapping Candidate Political Ideology with LLMs
Marie Vaughan, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, Master of Science in Data Science & Analytics, ’26
Advisor: Michael Bailey, Ph.D.
Understanding State-Level AI Readiness Policy
Henry Deng, College of Arts & Sciences, Computer Science and Mathematics, minor in Economics, ’26;
Saanvi Shashikiran, College of Arts & Sciences, Computer Science and Psychology, minor in Mathematics, ’27
Advisors: Lisa Singh, Ph.D., Andrea Headley, Ph.D.
Building Transparent, Reproducible, and Open Source Infrastructures to Study Digital Ecosystem Health
Ibadat Jarg, McCourt School of Public Policy, Data Science for Public Policy ’26
Advisors: Renée DiResta, Thessalia Merivaki, Ph.D., Ioannis Ziogas, Ph.D.
Partner Organization: National Conference on Citizenship
MediaNLP: An NLP Framework for Analyzing [Migration] Narratives in News Media
Stacy Che, College of Arts & Sciences, Data Science and Analytics ’26
Advisor: Nejla Asimovic, Ph.D.
Immunization Against Malicious Image Editing
Maggie Shen, College of Arts & Sciences, Mathematics & Computer Science ’26
Advisor: Sarah Bargal, Ph.D.
Understanding Students’ Effort in Low-Stakes Tests: Evidence from Behavioral Measures
Yuxi Shen, College of Arts & Sciences, Data Science & Analytics ’26
Advisor: Qiwei (Britt) He, Ph.D.
Partner Organization: King’s College London
Reimagining Evidence Libraries: Improving the Experience and Use
William Lowthert, McCourt School of Public Policy, Master of Public Policy ’26
Advisor: Amy O’Hara, Ph.D.
Partner Organization: BETTERProject.info
Classifying Near-Miss Events in Coal Mine Safety Reports Using Fine-Tuned LLMs
Ashiesh Thomas Mathews, McDonough School of Business, Master of Science in Management ’26
Advisor: Robin L. Dillon-Merrill, Ph.D.
Partner Organization: Marriott School of Business
Recognizability of Synthetic Likenesses in AI-Generated Images
Alessandra Garcia Guevara, College of Arts & Sciences, Computer Science ’26
Advisors: Elissa Redmiles, Ph.D., Sarah Bargal, Ph.D., Eric Zeng, Ph.D., Rupayan Mallick, Ph.D.
Algorithmic Assessment of Toolkit Integration in U.S. Election Officials’ Social Medial Media
Qingyang Wang, Georgetown School of Arts & Sciences, Data Science & Analytics ’26
Advisors: Thessalia Merivaki, Ph.D., Ioannis Ziogas, Ph.D.
Partner Organization: National Conference on Citizenship
StudyLens: AI-Powered Research Comparison and Synthesis
Ihsan Alaeddin, College of Arts & Sciences, Data Science and Analytics ’26;
Cindy Lyu, College of Arts & Sciences, Data Science and Analytics ’26
Advisor: Nejla Asimovic, Ph.D.
Coptic Low Resource Machine Translation (LRMT)
Alexia Guo, College of Arts & Sciences, Mathematics & Statistics ’26
Advisor: Amir Zeldes, Ph.D.
TrueMedia: Deepfake and AI Detection on Social Media
Camden Baucom, College of Arts & Sciences, Computer Science and Government, minor in Philosophy ’26;
Amy Li, Walsh School of Foreign Service, Business & Global Affairs, minors in Statistics and French ’25
Advisors: Lisa Singh, Ph.D, Sejin Paik, Ph.D.
Decoding “No Note Needed”: The Hidden Consensus Mechanism of Community Notes
Siyu Hu, College of Arts & Sciences, Data Science and Analytics ’26
Advisor: Renée DiResta
Modeling State-Level Differences in SNAP Error Types
Xiao Xu, McCourt School of Public Policy, Data Science for Public Policy ’26
Advisors: Jeremy Barofsky Ph.D., Eric Giannella Ph.D.
Understanding Methods for Sports Sentiment Analysis
Katherine Arkin, College of Arts & Sciences, Mathematics, minor in Computer Science ’26;
Sophia Dorr, College of Arts & Sciences, Computer Science and American Musical Culture ’27;
Jay Kakani, College of Arts & Sciences, Math and Government ’28;
Gui Lima, Walsh School of Foreign Service, Science, Technology & International Affairs, minor in Computer Science ’28
Advisor: Lisa Singh, Ph.D.
Partner Organizations: SSRS, Stitched Insights