Directory

Simon Cooper

Berkeley Computational Social Science Fellow
Sociology, Demography, UC Berkeley

Simon Cooper is a PhD student in the departments of sociology and demography at UC Berkeley with research interests in queer/LGBTQ* demography, economic sociology, and law and society. He hopes to critically apply computational techniques to surface (un)intended consequences of policy and law on key demographic outcomes, from the fertility effects of marriage equality to the later-life mortality effects of precarious work.

Before starting his PhD, Simon completed an MPhil in sociology and demography at Oxford, where his masters thesis investigated the causes of enduring...

Min Ragan-Kelley

Senior Open Infrastructure Architect

Min is a Senior Open Infrastructure Architect at BIDS, working on open source infrastructure for research and education, especially around the Jupyter project. He was a founding member of the Jupyter Steering Council, co-creator of JupyterHub, and has been working with IPython and Jupyter since 2006. Min got his PhD in Applied Science & Technology at Cal in 2013 working in Nuclear Engineering, and now spends most of his time on the JupyterHub, JupyterHealth, and Conda-Forge projects, as well as supporting students and researchers in open source open science.

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Gisselle Rodriguez Benitez

Berkeley Computational Social Science Fellow
Department of Sociology, UC Berkeley

Gisselle Rodriguez Benitez (she/her) is a PhD student in Sociology. She is interested in the intersection of work, training, and wellbeing. Gisselle is currently researching non-college pathways into the tech industry. With the Computational Social Science fellowship, she intends to build her text mining and analysis skills to explore digital discourse on economic precarity and self-improvement.

Prior to doctoral studies, Gisselle was a Research Associate at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University and a Fulbright student researcher at the Center for Educational...

Angela Jin

Berkeley Computational Research for Equity in the Legal System Fellow
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS), UC Berkeley

Angela Jin is a PhD student in Computer Science with a focus on Human-Computer Interaction and Algorithm Auditing. Her current research focuses on auditing policies and practices in the U.S. criminal legal system, and their implications for accountability. More broadly, her work aims to support community-led evaluations of and oversight over sociotechnical systems. Angela was also a member of the inaugural cohort of the UC Berkeley AI Policy Hub, where she worked on policy proposals regarding the use of algorithmic decision systems for forensics in the U.S. criminal legal system....

Cindy Alvarez

Berkeley Computational Social Science Fellow
Health Policy, Public Health, UC Berkeley

Cindy Alvarez is a Health Policy PhD student at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, with a specialization in Organizations and Management. Her research examines how Medicaid policies and collaboration between providers, health systems, and social service organizations affect health outcomes, access, and utilization. She is interested in applying causal inference and machine learning methods to understand these complex relationships. Prior to starting her PhD, Cindy worked as a researcher at Mathematica, leading projects that explored how to best implement programs and policies to...

John Halifax

Berkeley Computational Social Science Fellow
Epidemiology, Public Health, UC Berkeley

John Halifax is an Epidemiology PhD student at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. He broadly explores the role of neighborhood and place as determinants of health from an ecosocial perspective using flexible, minimally-assumptive causal inference methods. His current research includes extending causal inference methods to account for neighborhood specific confounding effects in multilevel, high-dimensional data settings, examining the effect of acute community violence on perinatal outcomes, and utilizing machine learning to forecast fatal overdose at the neighborhood level. Prior to...

Julian Ramos

Berkeley Computational Social Science Fellow
Health Policy, Public Health, UC Berkeley

Julian Ramos is a PhD student in Health Policy with an emphasis in Population Health Sciences. His research explores how institutional arrangements, interest groups, policy change and political economies shape criminal legal and public health outcomes, focusing on policing and interpersonal violence within race-class subjugated communities. Before his graduate studies, he was a political research consultant at Everyday Impact Consulting supporting grassroots organizations, youth development, criminal justice reform, Medi-Cal expansion, language access and cultural competency policies, anti...

Graduate Fellows

Jeffrey Lockhart

BIDS Faculty Affiliate
Department of Sociology, UC Berkeley
Assistant Professor, Sociology, UC Berkeley

Jeffrey Lockhart is a sociologist of science and technology. His work examines the relationship between the technical workings of systems and our understandings of the world. Lockhart uses large scale computational social science methods to study the production and development of science, as well as qualitative, archival, and technographic approaches to understand how people use and think about technology.

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Sociology...

Sofia Guo

Berkeley Computational Social Science Fellow
Social Welfare, UC Berkeley

Sofia is an MSW/PhD student at the UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare studying under Dr. Jill Duerr Berrick. Her research interests include analyzing front line child welfare decision making and applying econometrics tools to practice issues in the field. The CSSTP fellowship will support development of text analysis and modeling skills, in addition to training in leading data science techniques.Sofia received her BA in Economics from UC Berkeley in 2019. Prior to entering graduate school, Sofia was an assistant budget analyst at...