[Colloquium] 4/11 Moon Duchin (Tufts University) Design for Democracy

[Holly Santos]

Department of Computer Science Seminar

Moon Duchin
Professor of Mathematics and John DiBiaggio Professor of Citizenship and Public Service
Tufts University

Thursday, April 11th
4:00pm - 5:00pm
In Person: TBD

Title: Design for Democracy

Abstract: Today, U.S. democracy faces a suite of technology-enhanced challenges based on vast amounts of fine-grained data and increasingly sophisticated attacks. However, computing and technology are also part of the solution. In this talk I'll look at computational interventions to support democracy and voting rights, in particular in the area of fair political districting. I'll discuss projects that touch many areas of CS and related fields, including mathematical modeling of the law, the design and analysis of efficient algorithms, mechanism design and fairness, data privacy, computational geometry, data visualization, and software development. I will focus on the story of purpose-built algorithms to meet a conceptual need in the law: the "baseline problem" of understanding how voting systems perform in the absence of manipulation. For redistricting in particular, MCMC and other graph partitioning methods raise deep mathematical questions. Beyond districting, finding baselines points the way to a research program on designing modern electoral systems better aligned with ideals of representative democracy.

Bio: Moon Duchin is a professor of mathematics and the John DiBiaggio Professor of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University, where she runs a research lab focused on data science for civil rights.  She has served as an expert witness in redistricting court cases in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Texas, and her work played a central role in last term's big voting rights case in Alabama.  Her lab's open-source software packages have played a role in assisting governmental and citizens groups in dozens of states and cities.

Hosts: Hank Hoffmann and Lazlo Babai

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Holly Santos
Executive Assistant to Hank Hoffmann, Chairman
Department of Computer Science
The University of Chicago
5730 S Ellis Ave-217   Chicago, IL 60637
P: 773-834-8977
hsantos at uchicago.edu

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