Matthew Denny (Facebook) and Natalie Jackson (PRRI)

Matthew Denny is a research scientist at Facebook, and an
adjunct professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at
Georgetown University. The substantive focus of his work
centers on the study of Congress, state and local bureaucracy,
and organizational dynamics, through the use of computational
social science methods. In service of this research agenda, he
focuses on developing and implementing machine learning
algorithms for analyzing social processes. He has a particular
interest in developing new statistical models for text, networks,
and text-valued networks. He has also worked as a data scientist
at Skopos Labs, and cofounded Cerenetics, Inc. From 2013–15, he was a statistical methods consultant for the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Natalie Jackson has held senior and management positions in
media, academia, and nonprofit organizations. Most recently, she
was the managing director of polling at JUST Capital, where
she has built and managed a survey research team, as well as
contributed to the overall mission and strategy of the nonprofit
organization. Natalie received her doctorate in political science from
the University of Oklahoma and was a postdoctoral associate at
the Duke University Initiative on Survey Methodology. Her work
has appeared in peer-reviewed journals Electoral Studies and
Social Science Quarterly, as well as in several edited volumes.