Data Services

Since 2018, Data + Donuts has featured researchers and practitioners speaking on how they use data in their work and on issues of data and society. Below is a comprehensive list of past speakers. Speaker information is accurate for the time of their presentation. Event recordings are available upon request. Find upcoming Data + Donuts events.

Fall 2025

• Christopher Shay, Research Associate with the Crowd Counting Consortium (CCC) at HKS’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, on the CCC’s methods for documenting marches, protests, strikes, demonstrations, and other acts of claims-making in the United States.
• Greg Leppert and Catherine Brobston, Executive Director and Program Director with the Institutional Data Initiative (IDI) at Harvard Law School Library, on enhancing AI quality and integrity with library collections.
• Nathan Sanders, Vice President of Data and AI at Harvard Business Publishing and Affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, on his recently published book Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship (MIT Press, 2025; with Bruce Schneier).

Spring 2025

• Ian Spangler, Assistant Curator of Digital & Participatory Geography at the Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library and Lecturer in Geospatial Humanities at Tufts University, on the ways real estate data-sharing practices impact housing markets.
• Kathy Pham, product leader and Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at HKS, on data bias, algorithmic justice, and public policy.
• Joseph Hnath, PhD Candidate in Health Policy at Harvard University, on choice, competition, and regulation in Medicare Advantage with a focus on Special Needs Plans (SNPs).
• Maya Alper, Strategic Engagement Manager at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Technology Services and Security, on her award-winning Policy Analysis Exercise (PAE), “Digital Service Delivery for Stronger Communities.”

Fall 2024

• R User Group at the Harvard Data Science Initiative hosting R lightning talks. View the full event on YouTube, including talks by:
  • Joseph Hnath, PhD candidate in Health Policy & Economics at Harvard University, on a difference-in-difference analysis of the effect of default enrollment of persons eligible for Medicare and Medicaid.
  • Camden Blatchly, Software Developer at the Center on Rural Innovation (CORI), on a new R package from CORI that simplifies access to Federal Communication Commission (FCC) broadband data, making it easier to map and analyze connectivity nationwide.
  • Christian Testa, PhD candidate in Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, on using tidycensus to create maps and using the gt package to create great tables.
• Daniel Keating Jr.  and Mira Yu, former Emerging Technology Fellows in the City of Boston’s Office of Emerging Technology, on building a digital translation feature for the 311 app to enhance language access for constituents.
• Katharine (Kate) Robb, Senior Research Associate at the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, on how city governments can improve the health and safety of neighborhoods by leveraging data, collaboration, and innovation.
• Teddy Svoronos, Senior Lecturer of Public Policy at HKS, on teaching The Science and Implications of Generative AI.
• Bailey Flanigan, 2024 Wojcicki Troper Harvard Data Science Initiative (HDSI) Postdoctoral Fellow, on algorithmic tools for participatory democracy.

Spring 2024

• Ceilyn Boyd, Dataverse Development Project Manager at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) at Harvard University, on the Slavery, Abolition, Emancipation, and Freedom (SAEF) Data Collection.
• R User Group at the Harvard Data Science Initiative hosting R lightning talks. View the full event on YouTube, including talks by:
  • Andrew Ghazi, Statistical Geneticist at the Center for Computational Biomedicine at Harvard Medical School, on an NHANES+Stan Docker image.
  • Sam Kuhn, Economist at Appcast, on how to save hours of time with parameterized Quarto reports.
  • Sarah Hirsch, Research Analyst at Stanford Department of Public Health, on using regex in R for efficient programming.
  • Robert Sucsy, Epidemiologist at the Rhode Island Department of Health, on using ggplot2 and tidycensus to create choropleth maps of U.S. Census data.
• Jessica Lasky-Fink, Research Director at The People Lab (Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard), on using insights from behavioral science to improve government service delivery.
• Shira Zilberstein, PhD Candidate in Sociology at Harvard University, on the process of creating machine learning models for healthcare and the organizational tensions influencing the process.

Fall 2023

• Christina Langer, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab and Doctoral Researcher at the HKS Project on Workforce, on the value of apprenticeship skills in the labor market.
• Lauren Brodsky, Senior Director of the HKS Communications Program and Lecturer in Public Policy at HKS, on her co-authored book Because Data Can’t Speak for Itself: A Practical Guide to Telling Persuasive Policy Stories (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023).
• Forrest Hangen, PhD Candidate in Public Policy at Northeastern University in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, on studying housing inequities with big data.
• Hong Qu, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at HKS, on social media misinformation discourse.

Spring 2023

• Felix Owusu, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at HKS’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, on the limits of relying on administrative data alone to understand people’s lived experiences in the criminal legal system.
• Christian Testa, Statistical Data Analyst at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, on his work with the Public Health Disparities Geocoding Project 2.0. View the full presentation on YouTube.
• Sharad Goel, Professor of Public Policy at HKS, on access and equity in college admissions.

Fall 2022

• HKS Growth Lab’s Development & Design Team (Annie White, Steven Geofrey, Brendan Leonard, and Nil Tuzcu) on visualizing economic data with Metroverse and the Atlas of Economic Complexity.
• Courtney Hall, Director for Impact Assessment and Evaluation at the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, on maximizing imperfect data for decision-making.
• Reva Dhingra, Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, on how quantitative and qualitative methods complement each other in her research on the politics of refugee-related aid in Jordan.
• Victoria Asbury, PhD candidate in Sociology at Harvard University, on experimental and survey approaches for understanding the structures of American hierarchy.
• Whitney Airgood-Obrycki (Senior Research Associate) and Sophia Wedeen (Research Analyst), Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, on rental market trends during the COVID-19 pandemic. More on Whitney and Sophia’s work:
  • America’s Rental Housing 2020
  • Rental Deserts Perpetuate Socioeconomic and Racial Segregation (2022)

Spring 2022

• Justin M. Feldman, Health & Human Rights Fellow at the Harvard FXB Center for Health & Human Rights, on the under-counting of deaths in U.S. police custody. More on Justin’s work:
  • Quantifying Underreporting of Law-Enforcement-Related Deaths in United states vital statistic and news-media-based data sources: A capture-recapture analysis (PLOS Medicine, 2017)
  • Why Coroners Often Blame Police Killings on a Made-Up Medical Condition (Mother Jones, 2020)
  • How Paid Experts Help Exonerate Police After Deaths in Custody (New York Times, 2021)
• Amanda Hallock, Digital Transformation Specialist at the City of Scranton and MPP 2020, on digital transformation in smaller U.S. cities.
• Stephen Leonelli, LGBTQI+ policy expert and MPP 2016, on data-driven program design for LGBTQI+ inclusive policy.
• Jeremy Ney, author of the American Inequality newsletter and MPA 2021, on data visualizations of U.S. inequality.

Fall 2021

• Whitney Battle-Baptiste (Professor of Anthropology and Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst) and Britt Rusert (Associate Professor in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at UMass Amherst) on their co-edited book W.E.B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America.
• Tuğba Bozçağa, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Belfer Center’s Middle East Initiative, on innovative research methods for the political economy of development.
• Annette Zimmermann, Technology & Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center, on “The Power of Choosing Not to Build: Justice, Non-Deployment, and the Purpose of AI Optimization.”

Spring 2021

• Charles Amuzie, Digital Director at Color of Change, on CoC’s data equity work around the 2020 Census and beyond.
• Robyn Hillman-Harrigan, Racial Justice Research & Program Manager at UCLA’s Center for Critical Internet Inquiry and Critical Data & AI Equity Director at Feminist.AI, on data science for intersectional economic equity.
• Rachel Ludeke, PhD Candidate & Adjunct Professor at NYU’s Silver School of Social Work, on using qualitative methods to amplify the narrative voices of marginalized youth in the foster care system.

Fall 2020

• Melissa Jones, member of the Coronavirus Visualization Team at Harvard, on data visualization of socioeconomic and health disparities within marginalized communities during COVID-19.
• Moses Karanja, PhD Candidate in Political Science at University of Toronto, on digital identification data in Africa and its encounters with global finance practices.
• Khahlil Louisy, President of the Institute for Technology & Global Health and Technology & Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center, on data-informed COVID policy design regarding the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on marginalized communities.
• Sabelo Mhlambi, Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center and Technology & Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center, on using indigenous ethical models to create an equitable internet.
• Jennifer Pierre, UX Researcher and PhD, on data-centered participatory research design and epistemic burden.

Spring 2020

• Gabby Lim, Researcher at the Shorenstein Center’s Technology & Social Change (TaSC) Project, on using data to study information controls.
• Jennifer Weintraub and Pablo Morales Henry, #MeToo Project team at Schlesinger Library, on archiving social media & movement data.

Fall 2019

• Steph Nguyen, Research Scientist at the MIT Media Lab, on data literacy and privacy.
• Alessandra Seiter, Community Engagement Librarian at HKS Library & Research Services, on smart cities and participatory planning.
• Matt Smith, Principal Data Scientist with the City of Boston, on civic data.
• Annie White, Senior Product Manager at the Growth Lab at HKS, on using data to inform sustainable economic development.

Spring 2019

• Nasser Eledroos, Technology Fellow with the ACLU of Massachusetts, on data-driven advocacy.
• L. Kelly Fitzpatrick, Open Access and Digital Collections Specialist, on Harvard Library Innovation Lab’s Caselaw Access Project.
• Padmashree Gehl Sampath and Paola Ricaurte, Berkman Klein Center, on reclaiming the data commons.
• D. Scarnecchia, Researcher at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative’s Signal Program, on open data, surveillance, and humanitarian aid.

Fall 2018

• Yaso Cordova, Research Fellow at digitalHKS.
• Di Luong, Media Mobilizing Project, on data and algorithmic justice.
• Momin M. Malik, Data Science Postdoctoral Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center.
• Richard Pope, Research Fellow at digitalHKS.