SICSS-Chicago - Chicago State University

Kaitlyn Filip

Kaitlyn Filip is an Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science at Chicago State University in the Department of Computing, Information, Mathematical Sciences & Technology. Kaitlyn first worked with SICSS as a post-doc in 2024. She has a PhD in Communication Studies, Rhetoric & Public Culture and a JD from Northwestern University. Her research is on data transparency in the US courts. Kaitlyn is also the Communication Director of SCALES OKN, a court data non-profit that works to make court data meaningfully public such that everyone can measure what’s happening in the legal system. She is also currently knitting a black sheep sweater like the one Princess Diana wore in 1983.

Kat Albrecht

Kat Albrecht is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tulsa College of Law and long-time supporter of SICSS. Kat first worked with SICSS as a participant herself at the first ever SICSS site at Princeton University in 2017. She holds a PhD in sociology and a JD from Northwestern University. She is also a current MFA student at the University of Georgia in the screenwriting program. Kat’s research sits at the intersection of computational social science, the study of fear, and criminal law. She directs her lab - the Fear and Computational Law Lab – which uses innovative methods to measure how fear becomes entangled with U.S. law. Kat is also the Executive Director of the SCALES OKN, a court data non-profit that works to make public data meaningfully public such that everyone can measure what’s happening in the legal system at scale. She is also the North American Director of the Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science. Outside of her academic and non-profit pursuits Kat is a staff writer for Horror DNA where she specializes in reviewing creature features, low-budget horror, and practical special effect films.

Danye Medhin

Danye Medhin is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Bethune Cookman University and a policy analyst specializing in drug policy and criminal justice reform. He earned his PhD in Criminology from Georgia State University. His research blends casual inference and policy analytics, with a focus on how legal changes shape patterns of enforcement and inequality. Danye works extensively with large scale administrative datasets, including the FBI’s National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). His current work applies multiple imputation on a massive scale to address item level missingness in NIBRS, substantially improving its usability for policy analysis. Ultimately, this work will support a broader research agenda aimed at estimating the causal effects of cannabis legalization and related policies on arrest patterns across demographic groups. Outside of his academic work, Danye is an avid NBA 2K player, where he and his son lead a highly competitive crew.

Sierra Bell

Sierra Bell is a Ph.D. candidate in the Criminal Justice and Criminology department at Georgia State University. She obtained her Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree at the University of West Georgia where she has since returned to teach courses on criminology, terrorism, and juvenile justice. Sierra’s research interests involve developing new ways to operationalize and measure fear and fear of crime. She is currently completing her dissertation on understanding fear as an interdisciplinary social scientific concept.

Participant info coming soon.

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