Scott W. Allard

Director of the University of Washington Elections Database

Scott W. Allard is the Daniel J. Evans Endowed Professor of Social Policy and Associate Dean for Research and Engagement at the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington. Allard is an affiliate of the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology (CSDE) and of the West Coast Poverty Center. He also served as a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program from 2010 to 2020. He previously held faculty positions at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University (2000–03), the Department of Political Science at Brown University (2003–08), and in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago (2008–14). His primary areas of research expertise are social policy, federalism and intergovernmental relations, poverty, and the geography of inequality.

Jacob (Jake) Grumbach

Co-Director of the University of Washington Elections Database

Jake Grumbach is an Associate Professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. He was previously associate professor of political science at the University of Washington and a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton. Grumbach studies the political economy of the United States, with interests in democratic institutions, labor, federalism, racial and economic inequality, and statistical methods. His book, Laboratories Against Democracy, investigates the causes and consequences of the nationalization of state politics.

Lauren Woyczynski

Data Scientist

Lauren Woyczynski is a PhD student in the Sociology Department at the University of Washington. She also holds a Masters’ in Public Health from UW focused on Health Metrics and Evaluation. Her research interests span social demography, structural determinants of health, and computational methods. Her current research focuses on health disparities and determinants of lifespan variation in the United States incarcerated population.

Jessica Godwin

Data Scientist

Jessica Godwin is a Statistical Demographer and the Training Director for the Demographic Methods Certificate Program with CSDE. In her role as a Statistical Demographer, she will support the research of CSDE Affiliates and Trainees via consulting and the organization and facilitation of CSDE Workshops. Dr. Godwin received her PhD in Statistics from the University of Washington in 2021 and also completed CSDE’s Graduate Certificate in Demographic Methods. She was also the recipient of two CSDE fellowships, one from NICHD and one from the Shanahan Endowment. Her dissertation work examined how to best estimate child mortality from various sources and to improve upon national and subnational estimates in places with sparse data. As part of that effort, she led a study with CSDE Affiliate Jon Wakefield published in Statistics in Medicine that developed space-time modeling techniques for subnational child mortality estimates in low and middle-income countries. Subnational estimations of child mortality for 22 countries developed in collaboration with UN IGME can be found at https://childmortality.org/. Her broad research interests are demography, Bayesian spatiotemporal methods, survey statistics, and the places where all of those things overlap. She was born and raised in Alabama and received her M.S. in Statistics at Auburn University. Her thesis, titled “Group lasso for functional logistic regression”, was advised by Nedret Billor. She also received a B.S. in Actuarial Science. To read more about Dr. Godwin, visit her website: https://jlgodwin.github.io/.

Isaiah Wright

Data Scientist

Isaiah Wright began his Ph.D. journey with Evans in 2021. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of California, Riverside (UCR) as well as a Masters in Public Policy from UCR as well. Prior to Evans he worked for Rady’s Children’s hospital in San Diego, CA as a contractor to the County of San Diego examining the effectiveness of substance use and mental health programs in the County. Isaiah completed a capstone project during his time at UCR entitled “Understanding Latina Entrepreneurship in the IE” using mixed methods. This project involved a survey design informed by interviews and utilizing ACS data in order to understand the needs of minority business owners in the Inland Empire region. Isaiah has an interest in research pertaining to Urban and social issues revolving around race and inequality, specifically examining spatial relationships. Advised by Dr. Scott Allard, Isaiah works on issues relating to social mobility and non-profits, as well as collaborates with the Evans Policy Innovation Collaborative(EPIC) on Washington State Ballots.