Welcome to my website!
My name is Unchitta. Based in Washington DC, I am a Presidential Fellow and PhD candidate in computational social science at George Mason University.
I bridge interdisciplinary areas of study such as computational social science, complexity theory, urban sociology/geography, GIS, demography, and public policy to investigate social and population dynamics that make cities distinctive, resilient, and successful. My PhD work focuses on social interaction in cities as a building block of what shapes cities and the life outcomes of people within.
I am also passionate about applying complex systems thinking and my computational experience to aid urban policymaking and planning. I’d like to help make cities more livable and equitable. I’ve started on this journey somewhat (see some projects in my resume) — I’d love to chat if you share the same mission and/or think I can be helpful!
News and Updates:
- 4/2024: I will be presenting our work using mobile phone GPS data to study U.S. migration during the COVID-19 pandemic at the Population Association of America (PAA) 2024 conference this April in Columbus, Ohio.
- 1/2024: I am delighted to announce that I have advanced to candidacy!
- 4/2023: I am excited to share my unpublished project on building an agent-based model of the spatial mismatch hypothesis (in which involuntary housing choices and relocation of jobs lead to poorer market outcomes for Black workers in U.S. urban areas) at the 2023 George Mason University Graduate Interdisciplinary Conference.
- 7/2022: I will be presenting our geo-demographic research on local family ties in US metropolitan areas at the IC2S2 2022 conference in Chicago this July!
- 03/2021: I am honored to have been invited to speak as a panelist at the Mathematical and Computational Approaches to Social Justice workshop hosted by ICERM at Brown University