Alex DiChristofano

I am a third-year PhD student in Computational & Data Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis advised by Patrick Fowler. My principal focus is housing insecurity; I work on understanding client preferences and constraints in service allocation and their effects on efficiency and equity. In addition, I am investigating the landscape of evictions and 311 service requests in the St. Louis area. I use methods from the fields of mechanism design, optimization/machine learning, and human-computer interaction.

At Washington University, I am evaluating global accent bias in automatic speech recognition. By connecting this evaluation to the ways perceived accent has historically been used to oppress marginalized groups, I hope to advocate for greater equity and representation in speech recognition software. In collaboration with the Center for Analytical Approaches to Social Innovation at the University of Pittsburgh, I have helped design an online platform to connect university students and local Black-owned organizations.