Assistant Professor Amanda Coston has been awarded a significant research grant by the Hellman Foundation. Founded in 1994 by Chris and Warren Hellman, the foundation provides grants to colleges and universities in support of junior faculty research.

Recent years have seen unprecedented large-scale immigration enforcement operations in cities such as Minneapolis, LA, and Chicago. Coston’s project aims to understand how people changed their everyday behavior in response to these immigration operations. She and her team will use national-scale mobility and spending data to analyze changes in where and how often people frequent local businesses and civic institutions.

"I am so grateful for the support from the Society of Hellman Fellows! This research will enable my group to investigate the impacts of immigration enforcement on everyday life," said Coston.

Coston’s research focuses on real-world data challenges that affect the validity, reliability, and fairness of algorithmic decision-support systems and data-driven policymaking. Her work integrates methods from causal inference, machine learning, and nonparametric statistics. She earned her Ph.D. in Machine Learning and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University and later completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the Machine Learning and Statistics team at Microsoft Research. She also holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering with a focus on Computer Science from Princeton University, along with a certificate from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.

Photo: Catharyn Hayne