People

Leah Valentiner is a junior at Wellesley College and is majoring in Mathematics. She is interested in the ways that math can be applied to the social sciences. In her research, she is working to use topology to understand political structures and voting systems.

I’m Presha, a sophomore class of 2027. I hope to major in Mathematics and Computer Science and am really excited about this opportunity! I’m interested in the intersection of Mathematics and Social Science. As an IMD fellow I’m looking forward to learning more about maths behind democratic guidelines and policies.

Cianna Salvatora is a senior at Wellesley College, Class of 2025, double majoring in Data Science and Philosophy. With an interest in the intersection of mathematics and democracy, she is excited to see how mathematical frameworks can inform and enhance democratic processes. Her research project will center on modeling multi-winner districts and proportional representation.

Arial is a member of the Wellesley class of 2027 and is hoping to major in Applied Mathematic. She is interested in exploring the intersectionality of mathematics and politics, particularly how mathematical analysis can be used to better understand political systems and contribute towards solving socio political & economic issues around the world.

Winnie Zhou is a sophomore pursuing a double major in Mathematics and Computer Science. Her academic interests lie at the intersection of mathematics, philosophy, and economics, with a particular focus on decision theory, dynamic games, probability theory, and encryption methods. Winnie is passionate about applying mathematical models, particularly in understanding strategic decision-making and international power dynamics.

Karen is a member of the Wellesley class of 2026 and is majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics. She is interested in exploring how computer science and math can be used to inform decisions regarding global politics and voting methods. She is excited to join the IMD to further investigate various ranked choice voting methods using concepts from interdisciplinary fields.

Khyatee is a Sophomore majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics. Her research interests include exploring how mathematics can inform decisions in finance and policy. At IMD, she is working to devise a strategy that could allow candidates to buy votes in a ranked-choice voting system with confidence.

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. Her research focuses on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) which is a weighted voting system. She assessed the political implications of proposed UNSC reforms both qualitatively and quantitatively.

Hanqi Zhu is a member of Wellesley’s class of 2026. She plans to major in Mathematics and Computer Science. She is interested in how mathematical concepts, especially those seemingly distracted from reality, could be utilized and implemented to analyze political events and demographic progress. She did research on simplicial complexes and liquid democracy.

Janaki Kapadia is a member of the Wellesley College Class of 2027 and plans to major in Political Science and Mathematics. She is interested in the intersection of mathematics and social policy and understanding how mathematical modeling can help better economic and government policy. In the IMD program she further investigated the mathematical ideas behind how democracies organize as well as how math can be used to make these systems more just.

Camille Lorie is from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and is a member of the Wellesley College Class of 2024. She plans on majoring in Mathematics and Economics and was a fellow for the IMD 2022-2023 program. She is interested in how mathematics can be used to inform social and economic policy decisions that are aligned with democratic values.

Mira Chandriani is a class of 2026 data science and economics double major at Wellesley College. She is excited about her IMD research, in which she studied PEW political data through topological data analysis to better understand the structure of partisanship and polarization in the US.

Kamila Lim is a class of 2026 data science and French majors. She is interested in the intersection of cultural communication and data to demonstrate the impact of climate change on public health. She worked on the IMD project analyzing political typology data to better understand political polarization and similarity in the US.

Shraddha Anand is from Potomac, Maryland, and is a member of the class of 2021 at Wellesley College. She double majored in Mathematics and Economics, and also enjoyed Statistics. She worked on several research projects including extending some popular power index tools to the setting where some coalitions are forbidden.

Jun Ru Anderson (she/her) is a member of Wellesley College Class of 2021, she studied computer science and mathematics. She did research on the applications of topological data analysis to UNICEF surveys of socio-economic status around the world.

Audrey Ballarin is a member of the Wellesley College class of 2023, where she majored in Data Science with a concentration in Computer Science and Data Engineering. She is passionate about data justice and the social implications of AI systems.

Anastasia Brooks is a member of the Wellesley College Class of 2023. Having majored in Mathematics, Brooks is interested in how math intersects with politics and other social sciences and worked on a research project involving simplicial complexes and power indices.

Rozey Hill is from Jacksonville, Florida and is a member of the Class of 2023 at Wellesley College. She studied American Studies and Statistics. She is interested in the intersection of statistics and politics, especially when it comes to predictive election polling and modelling, and studied how different voting methods lead to more equitable candidate selection.

Minerva Johar is a member of the Class of 2022 at Wellesley College. She majored in mathematics and physics and participated in the 2020-2021 IMD Fellows Program. She did research in simplicial complexes and quantification of power.

Hayley Grape is a member of the class of 2023 at Wellesley college. She majored in Computer Science and Economics, and is interested in intersecting computer science with social causes.

Andrea Mock was a data science major at Wellesley, and graduated in December 2021. She is interested in the intersection of politics and mathematics and studied how political compromise can be expressed in the words of algebraic topology. Her work resulted in a paper that was published in the journal Mathematical Social Sciences.

Ava Mock is a member of the class of 2023 at Wellesley College. She was a math major and participated in IMD’s 2020-21 Fellows program. Her research involved combinatorial topology and quantification of power.

Delaney Morgan was a 2021-2022 fellow with IMD, but has been interested in the intersection of mathematics and politics since high school. Originally from Washington state, she is a member of the Wellesley class of 2023, where she studied Mathematics and American Studies. During the Summer of 2021, she performed research on post-quantum cryptography. She also worked with the Mathematics Department at Wellesley as an HHMI intern with the goal of making the department a more inclusive space, and at the time was in her third semester tutoring for the Mathematics and Politics class.

Heeba Nazeer is from Louisville, Kentucky and is a member of the Class of 2023 at Wellesley College. She studied Computer Science and Economics. She is interested in the intersection of Computers Science and other disciples, such as democracy and politics. Her work related to Algorithmic Implementations of Liquid Democracy. She was a fellow for the IMD 2021-2022 program.

Shreya Parjan (she/her) is a member of the Class of 2021 at Wellesley College, where she studied mathematics and computer science. She co-founded the Wellesley Data Collective to promote data-driven conversations about issues relevant to the Wellesley community. Her interests include promoting community-centered approaches to data science that improve the accessibility and relevance of techniques in the discipline.

Guadalupe Portillo Deras is from Los Angeles, California and a member of the Wellesley College class of 2021. Guadalupe majored in Mathematics and minored in Teaching and Learning Studies. She worked on a project that examined political quantitative literacy in K-12 mathematics curriculum.

Rachel Roca is a member of Manhattan College’s class of 2021, where she majored in mathematics and minored in computer science and Spanish. She was co-president of Just Peace, a social justice club on MC campus. Especially interested in voting, Rachel is passionate about combining her loves of math and social good to better our communities. She was a 2020 Barry Goldwater Scholar.

Ismael Manzanares is currently a software developer whose interests lean towards Social Choice Theory during his free time. He started a double degree program in Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Murcia, Spain. Having already finished the Mathematics part of the program, he finished the other one in collaboration with the IMD studying some computational aspects of voting.

Mariama Seydi is a member of the Class of 2023 at Wellesley College studying Political Science and Statistics. She is interested in predictive modeling of federal election cycles and demographic targeting methods employed by campaigns.

Eli Sporn (he/him) is a member of the class of 2024 studying mathematics at Brown University. He is interested in political mathematics, polling research, and knot and braid theory. Eli was interested in bringing IMD and some of its work to his campus. If you ever meet him, avoid mentioning board games or he’ll talk your ear off.

Cammy Zhou is a member of Wellesley College’s Class of 2026. She plans to major in Mathematics and minor in Philosophy. She is interested in investigating the mathematics behind social, economic, and political practices. She believes that mathematical modeling can effectively help us to understand and thus design the mechanisms to obtain the desired social outcomes. Through the IMD program, she furthered her understanding of democracy from a mathematical perspective and learned the various uses of mathematical modeling in the topic, with the ultimate goal of providing insights into our social mechanisms.

Bella Virgilio graduated from Wellesley in 2020 with a major in Media Arts and Sciences. In her time at Wellesley, Bella contributed to research under Professor Orit Shaer in Wellesley’s Human-Computer Interaction Lab, completed a research project on autonomous vehicles as part of a National Science Foundation program in Oldenburg, Germany, and developed professional experience in media technology and consumer electronics design. Most recently, Bella has co-written a data feature for the Wellesley News and served as the co-founder of the Wellesley Data Collective alongside Shreya Parjan ’21.

Brian Xu studied Mathematics and Statistics at Stanford University. Passionate about how math and theory can be used to pursue beneficial societal outcomes, Brian is very interested in using probability theory and mathematical modeling in social choice theory, voting theory, and welfare economics. Having previously worked on theoretical CS and mathematics research, he was very excited to work on research projects with IMD to broaden his experiences!

Rebecca Ye is a member of the Class of 2022 at Wellesley College, where she was a math major and religion minor. She was a Fellow for the IMD 2020-2021 program and studied applications of combinatorial topology to social choice theory.

Eliza Zizka is a member of the class of 2022 at Wellesley College. Originally from Washington state, she majored in math and geosciences and was a participant in the 2020-21 IMD Fellows program. Eliza researched voting and topological data analysis as well as the category-theoretic interpretations of the Arrow and Balinski-Young Theorems.

Gabrielle Mackiewicz is a member of the Wellesley College class of 2024 and is from New Jersey. They are majoring in mathematics and political science. They are interested in the intersection between math and politics, especially the use of data to facilitate social change.