Our Team
As an organization, the Lab operates on multiple scales. We have a core group for ongoing Lab activities and a larger group of contributors and collaborators working with us on various projects.
Core Team
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Moon Duchin (mduchin@data-democracy.org) founded MGGG at Tufts University in 2016 to focus mathematical attention on redistricting. Her areas of mathematical expertise are in geometry, topology, and dynamical systems. At the University of Chicago, she is a professor of data science and computer science.
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Haylee Eaton (haylee@data-democracy.org) is the Lab Operations Administrator, in charge of budget tracking, onboarding, and procurement. She has a bachelor’s degree in Art & Design and recently completed a Masters in Business Administration. She is interested in data management, process improvement, and finance.
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Ge Fang (he/him) is a research software engineer at the lab, working especially on Districtr. He studied theoretical CS at Tsinghua University, philosophy at Stanford and WashU, and has worked at Google’s search team. He is interested in the ontology of social sciences.
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Grace Gibson is a research software engineer who splits her time between projects for our lab (especially VoteKit) and supporting other democracy projects on campus. She has a Masters in CS from the UIUC and a BS in Biocomputing from Marquette. In her free time, she enjoys playing volleyball and drawing.
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Dylan Halpern is a veteran software engineer at the Data Science Institute and works part-time with our lab as a core developer on Districtr. His background is in Urban Planning and Civic Technology (MIT) and visual communication (BFA, VCU), and his interests are democratized and low-cost civic technologies, and geospatial data viz.
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Emrys King (he/they) is a predoc in the lab. He completed his BA in Mathematics and Spanish at Pomona and his MSc in Statistics at Imperial College London. His research interests are in statistical methods for redistricting and the history and philosophy of science. In his free time he loves reading, board games, and looking at trees.
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Hane Lee (hane@data-democracy.org) is a postdoc in the lab. They received their PhD from Columbia University, where they studied statistical methods for political science. Hane’s research interests lie in the intersection of race, politics, and quantitative methodology.
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Maria Milosh Maria is a predoc at the lab. She received a Ms in Computational Analysis for Public Policy at UChicago. Previously she worked as a data scientist at the World Bank and for the New York City. Maria is interested in computational social choice and civic technology.
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Raina Okonogi-Neth (she/her) is a math PhD student at Cornell University. She is interested in the mathematics of redistricting, Markov chains, and math and science communication. In her spare time, she enjoys participating in mathematical outreach, cooking, and watching movies.
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Peter Rock (peter@data-democracy.org) has a PhD in discrete differential geometry (at the intersection of computer science and differential geometry) from CU Boulder. Peter is interested in computational geometry, graph algorithms, and applications to redistricting. Peter is the lab’s Engineering Manager.
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Elliot Sher (he/him) recently graduated from the UChicago, where he studied sociology, law, and digital humanities. He has studied corruption and transnational financial flows, with a focus on computational methods. He has experience working with leaked archives, combining close reading with text analysis at scale.
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Sam Stephenson is a predoc at the lab. He has studied history, mathematics, and social science at UChicago. In previous work, he applied computational social science methods to 19th century economic geography. In his free time he enjoys reading, playing chess poorly, and watching movies.
Summer Fellows 2026
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Gabriel Aksakal Gabriel Aksakal is a fourth-year undergraduate at Boston College studying math and philosophy. He is interested in combinatorics and graph theory. Outside of math, he loves to hike, run, and hang out with his dog.
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Elias Boshara (he/him) is a Ph.D. candidate in Applied Math at UChicago. He is developing statistical frameworks for analyzing the behavior of spatial voting rules. He enjoys tending to his plants and spending time in the sunshine.
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Marcy Castro Lívano (she/her) is a research assistant at the Data and Democracy Lab. She is currently pursuing the MSCAPP at UChicago and holds a bachelor’s in Economics from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. She is interested in how computational tools can strengthen democratic institutions and public decision-making.
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Jon Greer Jon Greer is a first-year Data Science PhD student at the University of Chicago. He is interested in Markov chain methods and convergence diagnostics for redistricting.
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Sebastian Lemberger is a rising second year at the University of Chicago studying mathematics and philosophy. He is interested in topology and combinatorics, particularly when it is possible to apply them to things. In his free time, he enjoys reading science fiction.
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Alexandra Marcos Quispe (she/her) is an intern at the lab for Summer 2026. She is pursuing a MSCAPP at UChicago, building on a bachelor’s in Economics from Lima, Peru. Her work brings together economic theory, unstructured data, and forecasting — from linear algebra to machine learning — to diagnose problems and turn insights into actionable tools for government.
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Matthew Rossi is a first-year Data Science PhD student at the University of Chicago with research interests in computational social choice theory and equivariant machine learning. When not writing code or doing math, he enjoys playing the piano and indulging his obsession with rock climbing.
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Brock Sauvage (he/him) is a research assistant at the lab. He is currently in the MSCAPP program at UChicago, having also obtained a bachelors in Interdisciplinary Computing at KU. He is interested in civic technology and digital tools for community building. In his free time Brock enjoys biking alongside Lake Michigan, playing guitar, and writing Dungeons & Dragons campaigns for friends.
Key Collaborators, Past and Present
