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@mggg.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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Dylan Halpern works as a software engineer at the Data Science Institute at the University of Chicago and collaborates with MGGG as a core developer on Districtr. His background is in Urban Planning and Civic Technology (Master in City Planning, MIT) and visual communication (BFA, VCU), and his research interests are urban and regional analytics, democratized and low-cost civic technologies, and geospatial data viz.
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Hane Lee (hane@mggg.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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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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Phousawanh Peaungvongpakdy (he/him) is currently a Math PhD student at Washington State University, where he broadly researches mathematical and computational democracy. He has worked on parallel tempered optimization schemes for redistricting maps and election forecasting. In his free time, he enjoys baking bread and pastries.
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Peter Rock (peter@mggg.org) graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder where he studied discrete differential geometry, at the intersection of computer science and differential geometry. Currently, he works for the lab as a research scientist, and is interested in computational geometry, graph algorithms, and applications to redistricting. Peter manages research code for the lab.
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Shubham Singh is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois Chicago, where he applies machine-learning and mathematical models to the challenges of operationalizing efficiency and fairness in socio-technical systems. He’ll soon join the lab as a postdoc. His research interests are in computational social science, responsible machine learning, and AI evaluations.
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Brantley Vose is a math PhD student at The Ohio State University. He studies mathematical data science, specifically geometric methods like enforcement and detection of symmetry. In his free time he enjoys bouldering and playing his ukulele.
Summer Fellows 2025
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Michelle Contreras-Catalán (she/her) is a recent graduate from Amherst College, where she majored in Computer Science and Mathematics. At Amherst, Michelle worked on algorithms for validating statistically significant knowledge discovery results. She is interested in algorithmic game theory, particularly in problems that bridge theoretical computer science with socially oriented problems.
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Cole Gaines recently graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Operations Research and Information Engineering. He plans on attending London School of Economics for an MSc in operations research next year.
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Will Gilroy is a first year Mathematics PhD student at Cornell University. He has broad interests in computation and geometry, from computational algebraic geometry for physics to computational discrete geometry for redistricting. Before working with the group he was a software engineer for two years at Microsoft, and still loves to program. In his spare time he enjoys baking, biking, and time with friends.
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Sophia Guo is an undergraduate student at University of Michigan studying math and economics. She is interested in labor and development economics.
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Edouard Heitzmann is a PhD candidate in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Colorado Boulder. He studies Markov Chains and Martingales, and is currently researching auditing methods for STV elections. Outside of Math, he enjoys hiking, skiing, and ice-skating.
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Chloe Ireland is a math PhD candidate at The Ohio State University. She studies random groups and geometric group theory. Aside from doing math, she spends her time running, playing board games, and hanging out with her cat.
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Finn Kingsbury is an undergraduate at Wellesley College majoring in Data Science, with interests in computational social science, civic data, and digital humanities.
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Odelia Larbi-Amoah is a fourth-year undergraduate at Emory University pursuing a degree in Quantitative Sciences and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGS). She is interested in how theories regarding race, gender, and class apply to pop culture, film, and literature. Her interests lie in the intersection between data science and WGS and how they can be used for advocacy among different demographics!
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Rebecca Mann is a PhD student in the Brooks School of Public Policy at Cornell University. They are studying applied microeconomics, and have worked in urban, health, and labor economics. Outside of academics, they enjoy telling people fun facts about the great state of Maryland.
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Suvadip Sana is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at Cornell University. For research, he works in Computational Social Choice and AI Alignment. Beside research, he enjoys hiking, soccer and cooking.
Key Collaborators, Past and Present
