McCourt School of Public Policy
Massive Data Institute
Massive Data Institute

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

Rupayan Mallick, Ph.D. – Post Doctoral Fellow

Dr. Rupayan Mallick is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massive Data Institute at the McCourt School of Public Policy and the Department of Computer Science. His research interests include Generative AI, Explainable AI, and Multimodal Learning. He is currently exploring the generative models of deep learning such as diffusion models for different data modalities. Dr. Mallick completed his Ph.D. from University of Bordeaux (LaBRI and INRIA), France in Computer Science specializing in Explainable Deep Learning.

explore his work here

Sejin Paik, Ph.D. – Post Doctoral Fellow

Dr. Sejin Paik is a Postdoctoral Fellow within the Massive Data Institute (MDI) at Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy focusing on the humanness of AI-generated content during the 2024 U.S. election. Her research examines how individuals interact with AI-generated content and develops detection models to address AI-driven misinformation.
She received her B.A. at Emory University in International Studies, M.A. at Stanford University in Computational Journalism and Ph.D. in Communication from Boston University specializing in AI in Journalism, Political Psychology, Human-Centered AI and Intelligent Social Systems.

explore her work here

Stephanie Straus, M.Ed. – Policy Fellow

Stephanie Straus 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

Lucy Qin, Ph.D. – Post Doctoral Fellow

Lucy Qin, Ph.D. is a Postdoctoral Associate and Fritz Fellow. Broadly, her background is in applied cryptography and usable security/privacy. She recently completed her PhD in Computer Science at Brown University where the focus of her thesis was on designing novel cryptographic protocols in support of public policy use cases. At Georgetown, she will be working on projects related to privacy issues and the collection/use of genetic data. She will also be continuing prior work with Elissa Redmiles on deterring image-based sexual abuse.

explore her work here

Brandon Waldon, Ph.D. – Post Doctoral Fellow

Brandon Waldon, Ph.D. is a linguist by training, and his research is in the subfields of semantics and pragmatic, in other words, how context, linguistic structure, and social cognition jointly enable human beings to use and comprehend language. He received his Ph.D. at Stanford, where he recently completed a dissertation on the interpretation of epistemic modals. At MDI, he is interested in applying linguistic theory and methods in ways that can inform how lawyers, judges, and the public navigate hard problems of legal textual analysis. 

explore his work here

Eric Zeng, Ph.D. – Post Doctoral Fellow

Dr. Eric Zeng is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Massive Data Institute at the McCourt School of Public Policy. His research interests include usable security and privacy, consumer protection, and measuring harms to users on online platforms. He completed a PhD in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, and recently worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University CyLab. At MDI, his research will investigate the impacts of online advertising algorithms on user experience, and the spread of harmful AI-generated content on online platforms.

explore his work here

Le Bao, Ph.D. — MDI Post Doctoral Fellow 2022-2024

James Carey, J.D. — MDI Justice Fellow 2022-2025

Christopher Dick

Jaren Haber

Elizabeth Jacobs

Helge-Johannes Marahrens, Ph.D. — MDI Post Doctoral Fellow 2023-2025

J.J. Naddeo

Agoritsa Polyzou

Garrett Quenneville

Joseph Shaheen

Laila Wahedi

Yifang Wei

Nathan Wycoff, Ph.D. — Data Science Fellow 2023-2024; MDI Post Doctoral Fellow 2023-2021