Summer 2024 Undergraduate Research at IMD

This summer, two Wellesley College students will use topological data analysis of Pew political typology data to explore the structure of partisanship and polarization in U.S. politics.

Kamila Lim is a class of 2026 data science and French double major. She is interested in the intersection of cultural communication and data to demonstrate the impact of climate change on public health. 

Mira Chandriani is a class of 2026 data science and economics double major. She is excited about her IMD research this summer.

Using the “shape of data” approach of topological analysis, Kami and Mira hope to expose some features of the Pew survey that are not visible to standard statistical techniques. Existence of disjoint components or holes in the data might indicate the likelihood of people coming together on certain political issues or the ability of coalitions being formed along certain topics but not others. 

The research will be supervised by Prof. Ismar Volić from Wellesley College in collaboration with Prof. Yuliy Baryshnikov from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who had the initial idea for this project.