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    Using data to write songs for progress

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    A three-year recipient of MIT’s Emerson Classical Vocal Scholarships, senior Ananya Gurumurthy recalls getting ready to step onto the Carnegie Hall stage to sing a Mozart opera that she once sang with the New York All-State Choir. The choir conductor reminded her to articulate her words and to engage her diaphragm.

    “If you don’t project your voice, how are people going to hear you when you perform?” Gurumurthy recalls her conductor telling her. “This is your moment, your chance to connect with such a tremendous audience.”

    Gurumurthy reflects on the universal truth of those words as she adds her musical talents to her math and computer science studies to campaign for social and economic justice.

    The daughter of immigrants

    Growing up in Edgemont, New York, she was inspired to fight on behalf of others by her South Asian immigrant parents, who came to the United States in the 1980s. Her father is a management consultant and her mother has experience as an investment banker.

    “They came barely 15 years after the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which removed national origin quotas from the American immigration system,” she says. “I would not be here if it had not been for the Civil Rights Movement, which preceded both me and my parents.”

    Her parents told her about their new home’s anti-immigrant sentiments; for example, her father was a graduate student in Dallas exiting a store when he was pelted with glass bottles and racial slurs.

    “I often consider the amount of bravery that it must have taken them to abandon everything they knew to immigrate to a new, but still imperfect, country in search of something better,” she says. “As a result, I have always felt so grounded in my identity both as a South Asian American and a woman of color. These identities have allowed me to think critically about how I can most effectively reform the institutions surrounding me.”

    Gurumurthy has been singing since she was 11, but in high school, she decided to also build her political voice by working for New York Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins. At one point, Gurumurthy noted a log was kept for the subjects of constituent calls, such as “affordable housing” and  “infrastructure,” and it was then that she became aware that Stewart-Cousins would address the most pressing of these callers’ issues before the Senate.

    “This experience was my first time witnessing how powerful the mobilization of constituents in vast numbers was for influencing meaningful legislative change,” says Gurumurthy.

    After she began applying her math skills to political campaigns, Gurumurthy was soon tapped to run analytics for the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) midterm election initiative. As a lead analyst for the New York DNC, she adapted an interactive activation-competition (IAC) model to understand voting patterns in the 2018 and 2020 elections. She collected data from public voting records to predict how constituents would cast their ballots and used an IAC algorithm to strategize alongside grassroots organizations and allocate resources to empower historically disenfranchised groups in municipal, state, and federal elections to encourage them to vote.

    Research and student organizing at MIT

    When she arrived at MIT in 2019 to study mathematics with computer science, along with minors in music and economics, she admits she was saddled with the naïve notion that she would “build digital tools that could single-handedly alleviate all of the collective pressures of systemic injustice in this country.” 

    Since then, she has learned to create what she calls “a more nuanced view.” She picked up data analytics skills to build mobilization platforms for organizations that pursued social and economic justice, including working in Fulton County, Georgia, with Fair Fight Action (through the Kelly-Douglas Fund Scholarship) to analyze patterns of voter suppression, and MIT’s ethics laboratories in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to build symbolic artificial intelligence protocols to better understand bias in artificial intelligence algorithms. For her work on the International Monetary Fund (through the MIT Washington Summer Internship Program), Gurumurthy was awarded second place for the 2022 S. Klein Prize in Technical Writing for her paper “The Rapid Rise of Cryptocurrency.”

    “The outcomes of each project gave me more hope to begin the next because I could see the impact of these digital tools,” she says. “I saw people feel empowered to use their voices whether it was voting for the first time, protesting exploitative global monetary policy, or fighting gender discrimination. I’ve been really fortunate to see the power of mathematical analysis firsthand.”

    “I have come to realize that the constructive use of technology could be a powerful voice of resistance against injustice,” she says. “Because numbers matter, and when people bear witness to them, they are pushed to take action in meaningful ways.”

    Hoping to make a difference in her own community, she joined several Institute committees. As co-chair of the Undergraduate Association’s education committee, she propelled MIT’s first-ever digital petition for grade transparency and worked with faculty members on Institute committees to ensure that all students were being provided adequate resources to participate in online education in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The digital petition inspired her to begin a project, called Insite, to develop a more centralized digital means of data collection on student life at MIT to better inform policies made by its governing bodies. As Ring Committee chair, she ensured that the special traditions of the “Brass Rat” were made economically accessible to all class members by helping the committee nearly triple its financial aid budget. For her efforts at MIT, last May she received the William L. Stewart, Jr. Award for “[her] contributions [as] an individual student at MIT to extracurricular activities and student life.”

    Ananya plans on going to law school after graduation, to study constitutional law so that she can use her technical background to build quantitative evidence in cases pertaining to voting rights, social welfare, and ethical technology, and set legal standards ”for the humane use of data,” she says.

    “In building digital tools for a variety of social and economic justice organizations, I hope that we can challenge our existing systems of power and realize the progress we so dearly need to witness. There is strength in numbers, both algorithmically and organizationally. I believe it is our responsibility to simultaneously use these strengths to change the world.”

    Her ambitions, however, began when she began singing lessons when she was 11; without her background as a vocalist, she says she would be voiceless.

    “Operatic performance has given me the ability to truly step into my character and convey powerful emotions in my performance. In the process, I have realized that my voice is most powerful when it reflects my true convictions, whether I am performing or publicly speaking. I truly believe that this honesty has allowed me to become an effective community organizer. I’d like to believe that this voice is what compels those around me to act.”

    Private musical study is available for students through the Emerson/Harris Program, which offers merit-based financial awards to students of outstanding achievement on their instruments or voice in classical, jazz, or world music. The Emerson/Harris Program is funded by the late Cherry L. Emerson Jr. SM ’41, in response to an appeal from Associate Provost Ellen T. Harris (Class of 1949 professor emeritus of music). More

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      in Data Management & Statistics

      Jonathan Schwarz appointed director of MIT Institutional Research

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      Former Provost Martin A. Schmidt named Jonathan D. Schwarz as the new director of MIT Institutional Research — a group within the Office of the Provost that provides high-quality data and analysis to the Institute, government entities, news organizations, and the broader community. 

      Over its 35-year history, Institutional Research has provided consistent, verifiable, and high-quality data. The group was established in 1986 as part of the MIT Office of Campus Planning to support MIT’s academic budget process and space planning studies. The Institute established the group to provide a central source of dependable data for departments, units, research labs, and administrators. 

      Institutional Research conducts campus-wide surveys on topics that affect the community including commuting, wellness, and diversity and inclusion. Additionally, the group submits data on behalf of MIT to the U.S. Department of Education, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the National Science Foundation, and national and international higher education rankings such as U.S. News & World Report. Institutional Research also works with peer institutions, consortia, government agencies, and rankings groups to establish the criteria that define how students, faculty, and research dollars are counted.

      “At its core, Institutional Research is about counting people, money, and space,” says Schwarz. “Once Institutional Research established valid and reliable metrics in these areas, it was able to apply its deep understanding of data and the Institute to a broader range of topics using surveys, interviews, and focus groups. We collect, maintain, analyze, and report data so people can make data-informed decisions.”

      One of the group’s most data-rich surveys launched earlier this month, the 2022 MIT Quality of Life Survey. Administered every two years to the entire MIT community on campus and at Lincoln Laboratory, the Quality of Life Survey gathers information about the workload and well-being of MIT’s community members as well as the general atmosphere and climate at MIT. Findings from previous Institutional Research surveys helped to inspire several campus-wide initiatives, including expanded childcare benefits, protocols for flexible work arrangements, upgrades to commuting services, and measures to address student hunger.

      “Surveys give us an idea of where to shine a flashlight, but they are blunt instruments that don’t tell the whole story,” says Schwarz, who most recently served as associate director of Institutional Research, where he has worked since 2017. “We also need to sit down and talk to people and take a deeper dive to get nuance, rich detail, and context to better understand the data we’re collecting.”

      As associate director, Schwarz led an initiative to integrate qualitative data collection and analysis, and played an active role in work around issues of diversity, equity and inclusion. Schwarz joined MIT as an intern and later served as a researcher in MIT’s Office of Minority Education and Admissions Office. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Wabash College and served as the college’s mascot, Wally Wabash. He also earned a master’s degree in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a PhD in sociology from the University of Notre Dame.

      Schwarz takes over the post from his mentor and Institutional Research’s founding director Lydia Snover, who is retiring after serving MIT in various roles for more than 50 years. 

      “We are blessed at MIT to have a community with an engineering culture — measuring is what we do,” says Snover. “You can’t fix something if you don’t know what’s wrong.”

      Snover will serve as the senior advisor to the director through 2022. A dedicated and valuable member of the MIT community, she started her career at MIT working in administrative positions in the departments of Psychology (now Brain and Cognitive Sciences) and Nutrition and Food Science/Applied Biological Sciences and served as a cook at MIT’s Kappa Sigma fraternity before she officially joined MIT. Snover has a bachelor of arts in philosophy and an MBA from Boston University.

      In her capacity as director of Institutional Research, Snover was awarded the 2019 John Stecklein Distinguished Member Award by the Association for Institutional Research, and the 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of American Universities Data Exchange.

      Schwarz began his new role on Jan. 3. More

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      in Data Management & Statistics

      Exploring the human stories behind the data

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      Shaking in the back of a police cruiser, handcuffs digging into his wrists, Brian Williams was overwhelmed with fear. He had been pulled over, but before he was asked for his name, license, or registration, a police officer ordered him out of his car and into back of the police cruiser, saying into his radio, “Black male detained.” The officer’s explanation for these actions was: “for your safety and mine.”

      Williams walked away from the experience with two tickets, a pair of bruised wrists, and a desire to do everything in his power to prevent others from experiencing the utter powerlessness he had felt.

      Now an MIT senior majoring in biological engineering and minoring in Black studies, Williams has continued working to empower his community. Through experiences in and out of the classroom, he has leveraged his background in bioengineering to explore interests in public health and social justice, specifically looking at how the medical sector can uplift and support communities of color.

      Williams grew up in a close-knit family and community in Broward County, Florida, where he found comfort in the routine of Sunday church services, playing outside with friends, and cookouts on the weekends. Broward County was home to him — a home he felt deeply invested in and indebted to.

      “It takes a village. The Black community has invested a lot in me, and I have a lot to invest back in it,” he says.

      Williams initially focused on STEM subjects at MIT, but in his sophomore year, his interests in exploring data science and humanities research led him to an Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) project in the Department of Political Science. Working with Professor Ariel White, he analyzed information on incarceration and voting rights, studied the behavior patterns of police officers, and screened 911 calls to identify correlations between how people described events to how the police responded to them.

      In the summer before his junior year, Williams also joined MIT’s Civic Data Design Lab, where he worked as a researcher for the Missing Data Project, which uses both journalism and data science to visualize statistics and humanize the people behind the numbers. As the project’s name suggests, there is often much to be learned from seeking out data that aren’t easily available. Using datasets and interviews describing how the pandemic affected Black communities, Williams and a team of researchers created a series called the Color of Covid, which told the stories behind the grim statistics on race and the pandemic.

      The following year, Williams undertook a research-and-development internship with the biopharmaceutical company Amgen in San Francisco, working on protein engineering to combat autoimmune diseases. Because this work was primarily in the lab, focusing on science-based applications, he saw it as an opportunity to ask himself: “Do I want to dedicate my life to this area of bioengineering?” He found the issue of social justice to be more compelling.

      At the same time, Williams was drawn toward tackling problems the local Black community was experiencing related to the pandemic. He found himself thinking deeply about how to educate the public, address disparities in case rates, and, above all, help people.

      Working through Amgen’s Black Employee Resource Group and its Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Team, Williams crafted a proposal, which the company adopted, for addressing Covid-19 vaccination misinformation in Black and Brown communities in San Mateo and San Francisco County. He paid special attention to how to frame vaccine hesitancy among members of these communities, understanding that a longstanding history of racism in scientific discovery and medicine led many Black and Brown people to distrust the entire medical industry.

      “Trying to meet people where they are is important,” Williams says.

      This experience reinforced the idea for Williams that he wanted to do everything in his power to uplift the Black community.

      “I think it’s only right that I go out and I shine bright because it’s not easy being Black. You know, you have to work twice as hard to get half as much,” he says.

      As the current political action co-chair of the MIT Black Students’ Union (BSU), Williams also works to inspire change on campus, promoting and participating in events that uplift the BSU. During his Amgen internship, he also organized the MIT Black History Month Takeover Series, which involved organizing eight events from February through the beginning of spring semester. These included promotions through social media and virtual meetings for students and faculty. For his leadership, he received the “We Are Family” award from the BSU executive board.

      Williams prioritizes community in everything he does, whether in the classroom, at a campus event, or spending time outside in local communities of color around Boston.

      “The things that really keep me going are the stories of other people,” says Williams, who is currently applying to a variety of postgraduate programs. After receiving MIT endorsement, he applied to the Rhodes and Marshall Fellowships; he also plans to apply to law school with a joint master’s degree in public health and policy.

      Ultimately, Williams hopes to bring his fight for racial justice to the policy level, looking at how a long, ongoing history of medical racism has led marginalized communities to mistrust current scientific endeavors. He wants to help bring about new legislation to fix old systems which disproportionately harm communities of color. He says he aims to be “an engineer of social solutions, one who reaches deep into their toolbox of social justice, pulling the levers of activism, advocacy, democracy, and legislation to radically change our world — to improve our social institutions at the root and liberate our communities.” While he understands this is a big feat, he sees his ambition as an asset.

      “I’m just another person with huge aspirations, and an understanding that you have to go get it if you want it,” he says. “You feel me? At the end of the day, this is just the beginning of my story. And I’m grateful to everyone in my life that’s helping me write it. Tap in.” More