The Healthy Regions & Policies Lab (HEROP) is thrilled to welcome three new RAs and five returning RAs for the Fall 2021 term to the HEROP team. Research Assistants are UChicago undergraduate and graduate students who are passionate about further developing and applying their spatial analysis and GIScience skills to real-world research applications. We look forward to working with this talented cohort of RAs on the US COVID Atlas, opioid risk environments, and air quality initiatives. Learn more about them below.
James Keane
James is a second-year graduate student pursuing an MS in Statistics at the University of Chicago. He aims to use data driven techniques to make inferences on the relationships of societal factors and environmental phenomena.
Qiwei Lin
Qiwei is a candidate for the Masters in Computational Analysis for Public Policy (MSCAPP) at the Harris School of Public Policy with a focus on machine learning, international development, urban and health science. His research interests include how to combine novel data sources and machine learning methods to inform the allocation of social support resources and to improve the measurement of development outcomes in countries where reliable official statistics are lacking. He holds a BS in Statistics and Political Science from University of Michigan – Ann Arbor.
Ally Muszynski
Ally returns to HEROP this fall after working with us this summer as a Data Science Fellow in Measuring Accessibility. Ally is a recent graduate of the College and holds a B.A. in Environmental & Urban Studies and Public Policy. In December she will graduate with an M.A. in Social Sciences with a concentration in GIS (MAPSS). She is interested in environmental equity and sustainability and hopes to pursue a PhD in this area of study in the future.
Javier Andres Rojas Aguilera
Javier returns to HEROP this fall after working with us this summer as a Data Science Fellow in Social Spatial Networks. Javier is a student in the Master in Computational Analysis and Public Policy (MSCAPP) at the Harris School of Public Policy. Javier previously worked as an econometrician at the Colombian National Planning Department, where he developed a passion for data-driven policy-making and data visualization. He holds a B.A. in economics from Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
Sinduri Soundarajan
Sinduri is a fourth-year student studying Public Policy, Environmental Studies, and GIS at the College and working towards her Master in Public Policy (MPP) at the Harris School of Public Policy. She is excited to build on her passion for environmental justice and information accessibility by working on design and communications for the US COVID Atlas project.
Rachel Vigil
Rachel returns to HEROP this fall after working with us this summer as a Data Science Fellow in Measuring Accessibility. Rachel is a fourth-year student in the College majoring in Environmental and Urban Studies. She has a particular interest in the intersection of access to transportation and other health and safety metrics and is excited to explore those avenues with HEROP through opioid risk environment research.
Christian Villanueva
Christian returns to HEROP this fall after working with us this summer as a Data Science Fellow in Built Environments. Christian is a fourth-year student in the College majoring in Environmental and Urban Studies and minoring in Biology and Creative writing. He is interested in studying the spatial components of contemporary issues, exploring how to help underserved communities, and learning new methods of analysis. In his free time, Christian rates cheese on a radio show and online shops for a couch because his apartment doesn’t have one yet.
Andrew Warfield
Andrew is a student in the Master in Computational Analysis and Public Policy (MSCAPP) at the Harris School of Public Policy. Previously, Andrew was a Research Data Analyst for the Center for Geospatial Sciences at the University of California Riverside. He holds a bachelors in Public Policy from UC Riverside.
Jinfei Zhu
Ally returns to HEROP this fall after working with us this summer as a Data Science Fellow in Spatial Infrastructures. Jinfei is a student in the Master of Arts Program in Computational Social Science (MACSS). Her recent research interests include analyzing and visualizing COVID-19 geospatial data and optimizing data solutions for transferring and utilizing time-series geospatial data.
Healthy Regions & Policies Lab 