hi, I’m Sushmita!

I’m a data scientist, computational social scientist, and writer, based out of Chicago. My professional interests lie at the intersection of predictive modeling, causal inference, and applied statistics, used to advance financial inclusion and public health outcomes. I currently build underwriting models and develop internal tooling for Mission Lane, where our goal is to expand fair and transparent access to credit.

I have previously been a data scientist at Grubhub, focusing on experimentation, and at the Center for Neighborhood Engaged Research and Science at Northwestern University, where I used statistics, network science and machine learning to work on a variety of projects on gun violence and police misconduct in Chicago.

I arrived at data science by way of Economics at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M), policy research at J-PAL South Asia, and Computational Social Science at the University of Chicago. I’m easily excited by the application of statistical and computational methods in public health, media and popular culture. I love learning new things, thinking about reality TV, tending to my little community garden plot, and reading and napping in pretty locations.

You can contact me on LinkedIn, or at sushmitavgopalan@gmail.com.