Current Members:
Forrest Hangen (he/him) PhD Student in Public Policy, Northeastern University
forresthangen@gmail.com;
Forrest, research focuses on inequalities, especially related to housing. Specifically, he is interested in furthering our understanding of how multiple facets of urban life (e.g., landlord ownership structures, crime and disorder, eviction, etc.) combine to create disparate living conditions for tenants and examining solutions to these problems. He hopes this work will help policy makers act in informed and equitable ways to create stable, safe, and affordable housing.
Yunus Emre Tapan (he/him), PhD Student in Political Science, Northeastern University
tapan.y@northeastern.edu
Yunus Emre currently serves as the Data Consultant for The Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI), aiding community organizations with their data-related initiatives and enhancing their capacities for data analysis. As a Ph.D. student at Northeastern University with a focus on Political Methodology and Comparative Politics, he delves into online political behavior using machine learning, computational text analysis, and network analysis. His academic background includes a graduate certificate from Northeastern, an MSc from Middle East Technical University, and a BA from Bogazici University in Turkey. Prior to his Ph.D. journey, he was a Visiting Lecturer at Kadir Has University and contributed to policy insights at a non-partisan think tank in Ankara.
Daniel Engelberg (he/him) Postdoctoral Research Associate
Daniel L. Engelberg asks on how we imagine climate just futures and how those future imaginaries aid climate action driven by diverse urban communities. Mr. Engelberg utilizes community-based research approaches and participatory modeling to imagine futures with communities, qualitative methods to understand present long-range planning processes, and quantitative methods to model pathways towards more just and sustainable futures. At BARI, Daniel leads research for the Common SENSES project developing green infrastructure solutions for climate justice with community partners along the Blue Hill Avenue. Mr. Engelberg holds a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from MIT, a Masters in Community Planning from the University of Maryland and a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from Bates College.
Josh Rosen (He/him) PhD Student in Public Policy, Northeastern University
Josh Rosen is a computational social scientist pursuing his doctoral studies in Northeastern University’s School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. His research focuses on causal inference, Bayesian modeling, and harnessing big data for empirical applications in urban economics.
David Jefferson (He/him) PhD Student in Public Policy, Northeastern University
David is a doctoral student within the Policy School at Northeastern University pursuing his PhD in Public Policy. He is a passionate food justice advocate who believes that food can be used as a unifier, community builder, and a tool for empowerment and political resistance. In addition to his passion for food and agriculture policy, David’s research interests also include mass incarceration and its impact on communities of color and reentry programming for formerly incarcerated individuals. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Public Relations from Georgia Southern University and a Master of Arts in Urban & Public Affairs from the University of San Francisco.
Mai Waziry (she/her) Master Student in Urban Informatics, Northeastern University
Mai is analyzing heat data from different sources both locally and from cities across the US to measure variations in heat across space.
Past Members:
Shunan You (she/her) PhD student in Sociology, Northeastern University
Shunan serves as a research assistant and the Data Consultant at the Boston Area Research Initiative. Her research areas are globalization, transnationalism, spatial mobility, and highly skilled labor migration. Shunan aims to unpack how global mobile workers change organizational management, complicating family lives, dissolving traditional community, and cultivating individualism. She is interested in both qualitative methods and computational social science methods.
Rylee Smith (she/her) Master Student in Architecture, Northeastern University
Rylee is working with the CommonSENSES team & building geographic data infrastructure. Rylee has a Bachelor of science in Architecture, from Northeastern University
Brooke Glatzhofer (They/Them)
Their recent research includes an intersectional analysis of housing discrimination among transgender identities using the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, revealing that less educated Black trans women experience the most severe outcomes. They have worked as a Research Assistant at BARI, updating Housing datasets on the Boston Data Portal.
Marjan Moradimehreh, masters student in Criminology and Criminal Justice, Northeastern University
moradimehreh.m@northeastern.edu;
Marjan is a graduate research assistant at Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI). She is interested in uncovering patterns of crime and disorder in the city of Boston. In particular, she is analyzing the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic across Boston neighborhoods by conducting quantitative research using R on a variety of administrative databases.
Saina Sheini PhD Student in Public Policy, Northeastern University
sheinimehrabzadeh.s@husky.neu.edu
Saina is a PhD candidate in public policy. She is interested in discovering the underlying patterns of urbanization and development along with urban sustainability and resilience. She has done research on the resilience of the energy and transport sectors in the metro-Boston region under normal operating conditions and in light of a shock to these sectors, such as an extreme weather event, developing a network that captures how various agencies and other entities interact with each other. She is now helping to develop a social media-based methodology for measuring and observing the social resilience of communities.
Riley Tucker PhD student in Criminology, Northeastern University
Riley is a Criminology Ph.D. student who serves as a research assistant and the Data Consultant at the Boston Area Research Initiative. His research considers how the behavior of individuals is shaped by neighborhood context and social processes. Specifically, he is interested in how communities act to prevent crime and how neighborhood crime shapes the lives of local residents.
Alina Ristea PhD in Geo-Informatics, University of Salzburg
a.ristea@northeastern.edu
Alina is a Postdoctoral Research Associate for Boston Area Research Initiative, with a PhD in GeoInformatics from the University of Salzburg, Austria. She is interested in spatiotemporal analyses of urban phenomena with special emphasis in criminology. Her present research projects include understanding patterns of problem properties from a crime and disorder points of view, spatial distribution of crime around sporting events, administrative data manipulation and integration in the Boston Data Portal, and impact of COVID-19 on people’s social activities. In addition, she is interested in data visualization, predictive analytics, and building an in-depth understanding between academia and public/private sectors.”
Jesse DiValli PhD in Sociology, Northeastern University
Jesse is a fourth-year graduate student, pursuing his PhD at NEU after completing a M.A. of Sociology at Howard University. His studies focus on environmental policies and impacts, particularly in the areas of resilience and sustainability. He is especially interested in conducting social science research that responds to the needs of disadvantaged communities and informs public policy in urban environments