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Program Coordinators

The Data Science in the Social Science program is coordinated by NU Data Science Scholars Chris Skovron and Jon Atwell. Chris and Jon will also be the primary instructors for the Computing Essentials for Social Scientist training program.

Chris Skovron

Chris Skovron is a political scientist who studies American politics with a focus on representation. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan in 2017 and is now a Data Science Scholar at Northwestern University with appointments with the Institute for Policy Research and the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems. He studies how people (mis)perceive public opinion in the United States. His methodological interests focus on the challenges associated with using survey and voter file data to research representation and political behavior. Pacific Standard magazine named Chris one of their “Top 30 Thinkers Under 30.” He has B.A.s in political science and English from The Ohio State University.

 

Jon Atwell

Jon Atwell is a sociologist who studies the social dimensions of cognition and the dynamic emergence of social order using computational and mathematical techniques. Jon received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 2017, where he was an NSF IGERT fellow with the Center for the Study of Complex Systems. He is now a Data Science Scholar at Northwestern University with appointments with the Institute for Policy Research and the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems. He has B.A.s in Math, Economics and Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin and worked in the restaurant industry before starting this career.