ABOUT THE TEAM

Damon Mccoy
Damon McCoy is an assistant professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering. He received his Ph.D., MS, and BS in Computer Science from the University of Colorado, Boulder. McCoy is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award, former CRA/CCC Computer Innovation Fellow, IEEE Security and Privacy best practical paper award, and ACM MobiSys best paper award.

Laura Edelson
Paul Duke
Paul Duke is a Software Engineer. They received their Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Georgia. Paul previously worked as a Software Engineer at Google, and was fired after organizing for workers’ right to know what they are working on and how their work is being used, as well as advocating for improved working conditions for temps, vendors, and contractors.

JEREMY MERRILL
Jeremy B. Merrill is a reporter and a coder with a special interest in how ad-tech and algorithmic infrastructure is exploited for scams, shady political tactics and corporate sleight-of-hand about who’s doing what.He is fascinated by the possibilities of using machine learning techniques to enable investigative journalism using large datasets. The subject of one such investigation, where ML tools helped journalists search a large, multilingual corpus of leaked documents by (an approximation of) their meaning, was so incredulous of the combined power of reporters and computers that she tweeted: “715 thousand documents read? Who believes that?”Jeremy has previously written for Quartz, ProPublica and The New York Times.

Nancy Watzman
Nancy Watzman is director of Lynx LLC, based in Denver, Colorado. She is a strategist specializing in developing and managing collaborations and partnerships to support journalists, technologists, and researchers in countering online dis- and mis-information, conducting investigations, and increasing newsroom sustainability. She is former director of and remains an advisor to the Colorado Media Project.