Looking Outwards-08

The individual I selected is Catherine D’Ignazio. D’Ignazio is an associate professor of Urban Science and Planning at MIT. She is also the Director of the Data + Feminism Lab, also at MIT. Her work focuses on using data and computational methods to work towards gender and racial equality through the lense of urban design and architecture. She also authored the book Data Feminism that she published through MIT Press. A project of D’Ignazio’s that I was particularly interested in was her creation of the reproductive justice hackathon. The hackathon pushed individuals to come up with solutions to the issues that arise with finding a secure place to pump breast milk as well as finding better solutions to current pumping devices. Currently, a big focus of her work is discovering and elevating “hidden data.” This includes data such as how many women have died during childbirth in countries where that data is rarely recorded. D’Ignazio’s presentation style is very engaging and personable. She started her presentation with her own experience pumping in the MIT Media Lab as way to engage with her work and its importance.