Mathematician and redistricting expert joins Brooks School as radical collaboration hire

A mathematician and public policy expert who has advised numerous U.S. states on redistricting and whose lab has been at the forefront of an emerging discipline that merges data science and elections has joined Cornell as a member of the Brooks School faculty, the Department of Mathematics in the College of Arts and Sciences and is affiliated with the Center for Data Science for Enterprise and Society as part of the provost's Data Science Radical Collaboration initiative.

Moon Duchin, who founded the MGGG Redistricting Lab in the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University, is a prominent voice on fair redistricting who has developed mathematical models to analyze the potential and actual outcomes of changes to policy and voting districts. She has served as an expert in redistricting litigation in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Alabama, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas and Georgia.

"Moon brings a unique combination of research, practice, and instruction that bridges data science and policy in exciting ways and fits perfectly with the Brooks School's mission to improve society and strengthen democracy," said Brooks School Dean Colleen Barry.

Duchin, whose research focuses on discrete geometry and randomized models with applications to the study of voting and democracy, started her work with elections in 2016 when the field was only starting to see serious mathematical attention.

"When I first started I thought there were mature, well-evaluated models of what districts should look like without gerrymandering, but we found that there was really room for new ideas," Duchin said. "Our first job was to build a better mathematical baseline for how things might look before line-drawing agendas get activated."

In the years since, Duchin has become a sought-after expert for lawmakers and organizations seeking to make elections and voting districts more democratic.

"Mathematical data science is my home, but I have made a deep investment in taking in the interdisciplinary literature and understanding the legal and policy frameworks that have informed redistricting over time, because you are never going to solve these problems through pure math," Duchin said. "Brooks and Cornell really offer me the perfect platform to deepen the understanding of how we can use data science to make democracies more responsive to citizens."

Most recently, Duchin's work has turned to the study of alternative systems of election as she advised community groups in Portland, Oregon, before and during the city's implementation of ranked-choice voting for its city council elections.

"We are so excited about Moon's work and about the collaboration with Brooks. The implications of using mathematical models to make elections more democratic are far-reaching and, really, a starting point for the type of work we can do together at Cornell to push the field of public policy forward with data science," said David Shmoys, Director of the Center for Data Science for Enterprise and Society and Laibe/Acheson Professor of Business Management and Leadership Studies. "Attracting Moon to Cornell is the epitome of a `radical collaboration' hire in data science; she is a scholar who touches virtually the full span of campus, from cutting-edge computational perspectives to policy implications interacting with the social sciences and law, while built on a firm mathematical foundation."

Duchin plans to bring her lab to Brooks with an expanded mission as she broadens the scope of her work and begins her work with Cornell undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers. This Spring, she will launch a public policy class for undergraduates that examines how governments render their land and their people as data.

"We want to look at how the state sees its citizenry through the lens of the census and voting districts, but we'll also be using hands-on computing tools to build our own models," Duchin said. "I think that blend of social science and data science is something a lot of students are looking for these days."

Giles Morris is assistant dean for communications in the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy.

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