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, demography, GIS, 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, focusing on housing and transportation (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:
- 4/2023: I am excited to share my unpublished project on building an agent-based model of the spatial mismatch hypothesis (in which involuntary housing choices and relocation of jobs lead to poorer market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 am excited to be presenting our geo-demographic research on local family ties in US metropolitan areas at the IC2S2 2022 conference in Chicago this July!
- 08/2021: Had a lot of fun returning to the industry as a data science intern for the summer. I worked on building a network-based recommendation system for online food ordering as well as an in-house automated A/B testing platform. Thank you Clover for having me back!
- 05/2021: I have been invited to speak at the SIAM Dynamical Systems 2021 conference on our work on co-evolving bounded-confidence opinion dynamics model on adaptive networks.
- 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! I am very excited to attend as a participant as well.
- 02/2021: Our article on modeling infectious diseases for young readers is out on Frontiers for Young Minds!