I am a social psychologist and data scientist focused on helping mission-driven organizations (governments, non-profits, and social enterprises) develop their analytic practices through data modeling, defining and reliably reporting key metrics, predictive modeling, experimentation, and causal inference. I am currently Lead Data Scientist at eSpark Learning, where I am developing our experimentation and causal inference practices to improve our product, marketing, and sales.
At Medic, I developed the data science function, led and managed the small team of data scientists, worked with funders and health systems to identify opportunities for modeling, and conducted implementation research to evaluate how data science can contribute to to community healthcare delivery. I worked with DataKind and other external collaborators to expand our data science capacity without additional staffing by developing projects to build new predictive algorithms and improve data trust.
I have been a Data Science for Social Good Fellow Fellow and Data Scientist at the University of Chicago’s Center for Data Science and Public Policy (DSaPP), where I helped governments use machine learning to deliver services more efficiently, effectively, and equitably. My work delivered predictive models to reduce involvement with the criminal justice system for complex populations in Johnson County, KS and Los Angeles, CA; to predict housing at risk of health and safety violations for San Jose, CA; and to integrate homelessness data with criminal justice data for several US counties to prioritize housing for at risk populations. I continue to volunteer for the Data Science for Social Good Fellowship and contribute to triage, the machine learning and model governance package we developed.
I have a PhD in social psychology from the University of Illinois. My research used experiments to examine how we explain and make judgments about the social world, including how we make moral judgments, how we think about polarized political issues like climate change, and how we think about social categories like race and gender. I am also interested in meta-scientific topics like replication and research methods.
Before all of this, I earned a bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature at the University of Maryland, tutored K-12 and college students in reading and writing, worked in education policy and research at American Institutes for Research, and earned a master’s degree in Cognition and Culture at Queen’s University Belfast. All of these experiences have molded my research interests and informed my belief in the power of science to help us understand and improve the social world.
You can contact me at ecsalomon@gmail.com or on Twitter @ecsalomon.