McCourt School’s Massive Data Institute appoints new director

The McCourt School of Public Policy’s Massive Data Institute (MDI) appointed Dr. Lisa Singh as its new director, succeeding Dr. Michael Bailey who served in the role for three years. Singh, a research professor at MDI and a professor in Georgetown’s Department of Computer Science, will assume her new role on July 1.

For the last six years, Singh has served as a member of MDI’s Executive Board, while contributing to the Institute’s cutting-edge technical and multidisciplinary research. She has authored/co-authored more than 80 peer reviewed publications and book chapters related to data-centric computing. She is also the co-author of Words That Matter: How News and Social Media Shaped the 2016 Presidential Election While at MDI, Singh has helped build the data blending research area in the Institute, developed the Cloud-based computing infrastructure to support large-scale data analysis by researchers across the university and helped spearhead the MDI Scholars program. 

As MDI director, Singh will strengthen the Institute’s strategic partnerships with researchers and practitioners in government, academia and industry, and help expand MDI’s research portfolio. “MDI has a strong and growing research portfolio. I am excited to continue to strengthen that portfolio by connecting more faculty working on innovative research to the Institute, growing the number of MDI Scholars and MDI Fellows participating in research, and fostering collaborations with local and regional leaders interested in data driven approaches to improve public policy outcomes for our community,” said Singh.

While overseeing the growth and expansion of MDI, Singh, an expert in data mining, data science and database systems, will also continue work on a number of research projects. She was recently awarded a research grant from Georgetown University, the McCourt Institute and academic partner Sciences Po to support her work studying the impact of technology on individuals and society. Singh co-leads an interdisciplinary study between social scientists and computer scientists to pioneer new uses of public, open-source data collected from social media and local news to predict forced displacement from specific countries, including Ukraine, Iraq and Venezuela. She and her team also study the spread of misinformation and develop algorithms for detecting it on social media. Singh has recently conducted research about policy misinformation impacts on forced migration and the spread of misinformation from the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election.