People

Ilinca Drondoe is a member of the Wellesley College Class of 2026. She hopes to major in Peace & Justice Studies and International Relations, and she is passionate about how understanding politics from a mathematical perspective can lead to socially just policy change. She is currently researching United Nations Security Council reform proposals from a quantitative and political perspective.

Grace Knuth is a member of the Wellesley College Class of 2027. She is considering majoring in geosciences or mathematics, and she is excited about creating change through mathematical analysis of policy issues.

Audrey Wen is a member of Wellesley’s class of 2027 and a prospective Economics and Mathematics major. She is interested in welfare economics and development policy. At IMD, she helps manage the website and runs IMD’s social media.

Joya Breinholt is a member of Wellesley’s class of 2026. She is a planned major in American Studies & Economics. A native of Washington, DC, she is interested in how the mathematical sciences can be utilized to maximize democratic outcomes and how mathematics interacts with campaign finance. At the IMD, she assists with fundraising and grant applications.

Cicely Henderson (she/her) majored in math and graduated from Wellesley in 2023. She was lucky to work with IMD for three years, where she conducted research about the change over time of quantitative rhetoric in political speeches, worked as an administrative assistant for IMD, and created many Math and Politics Trivia posts. Now, Cicely studies graph theory as a graduate student at University of Waterloo in the Combinatorics and Optimization department.

Brooke Lumer (she/her) is from Marlboro, New Jersey, and is in the class of 2023 at Wellesley College. She is majoring in Spanish and Political Science, and is interested in the politics of voting rights both in the U.S. and internationally. She managed the IMD website.

Lisa Orii is a member of the class of 2021 at Wellesley College. She double majored in Computer Science and Philosophy, and enjoys researching how human happiness and well-being can be maximized through ethical developments of technology. She was IMD’s first intern and initially managed all of the institute’s administrative aspects.

Juyuan (Angel) Xu is from Beijing, China, and a class of 2023 student at Wellesley College. She double majored in Computer Science and Economics, and managed the website as an intern at IMD. She is currently pursuing a CS Master of Science degree at Brown University, and exploring her passion in AI equality research.

Hanqi Zhu is a member of Wellesley’s class of 2026. She plans to major in Mathematics and Computer Science. At IMD, besides conducting research on simplicial complexes and liquid democracy, she is also responsible for facilitating works and content curation as an intern.

Cherith Chen is a member of the class of 2024 at Wellesley College. She majors in Mathematics and minors in Statistics. She is interested in probability theory and theoretical statistics. She helps with IMD’s website and administrative work.