McCourt School of Public Policy

MDI Fellows

MDI is pleased to host a group of postdoctoral and policy fellows each academic year. Fellowships are advanced scholarly appointments for one or more academic years. Fellows engage in advanced independent and/or directed research with colleagues at the Massive Data Institute. In addition, fellows lead or participate in several data-oriented workshops and academic conferences at Georgetown and at partner institutions. As junior scholars in their field, fellows contribute to the intellectual life of the McCourt School and help build relationships across disciplines and departments within the University.

Current Fellows

Le Bao, PhD – Post Doctoral Fellow

Le (he/him) studies political methodology and political behavior. His methodological interests include spatial methods, Bayesian statistics, and compositional data. He also served as the replication data analyst for the journal Political Analysis during 2021-2022.

explore his work here

James Carey, J.D. – Justice Fellow

James (he/him) works with the Executive Director and the Institute’s distinguished fellows on projects which explore how technology law and policy can advance justice in the world. These projects include the Civil Justice Data Commons, the institute’s academic programs and educational events, and research into cutting-edge policy problems.

explore his work here

Christopher Dick, PhD – Senior Fellow

Chris (he/him) is the founder of Demographic Analytics Advisors and a Senior Fellow at Georgetown University’s Massive Data Institute. In both roles, he helps organizations to create effective change using data and data science. His goal is to understand the recipe for data science success and implement it within the government space.

explore his work here

J.J. Naddeo, PhD – Post Doctoral Fellow

J.J. (he/him) is a Fritz Family Postdoctoral Fellow who focuses on identifying racial disparities in the criminal justice system and offering novel solutions. He is also interested in political economics and has two working papers that utilize large spatial data to answer questions about sub-national targeting of FEMA aid and voter decision-making.

explore his work here

Stephanie Straus, M.Ed. – Policy Fellow

Stephanie (she/her) facilitates the linking of previously un-linked datasets to inform pressing policy issues across education, public health, and the civil justice system. Stephanie also advocates for secure data governance models that address the legal and regulatory risks involved with data sharing.

explore her work here

Nathan Wycoff, PhD – Post Doctoral Fellow

Nathan (he/him) is a Postdoctoral Fellow working with Lisa Singh and Ali Arab on variational Bayesian methodology applied to forced migration around the world. He received a PhD in statistics from Virginia Tech under the supervision of Robert B Gramacy with a dissertation on statistical approaches to performing computer simulations.

explore his work here

Jaren Haber

Elizabeth Jacobs

Agoritsa Polyzou

Garrett Quenneville

Joseph Shaheen

Laila Wahedi

Yifang Wei