Katie Spoon

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Pronouns: she/her
Contact: katherine.spoon@colorado.edu
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About Me

I’m on the job market!

I am a computational social scientist and a 5th-year PhD candidate in computer science at the University of Colorado, Boulder (graduating in June 2025), where I am fortunate to be supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, advised by Aaron Clauset and Dan Larremore. I also just received a Master’s in Education Policy, advised by Kevin Welner. I am currently a Data Science Fellow at the U.S. Census Bureau.

My research systematically investigates social inequalities in education, careers and health at scale to better inform policy decisions that address those inequalities. I enjoy using a diverse range of data science and social science methods to conduct large-scale, interdisciplinary administrative, survey, network, and text analyses, which often reveal patterns not visible at a smaller scale.

Prior to grad school, I worked as a research engineer at IBM Research, and studied computer science at Indiana University, where I developed an early-warning system to detect dyslexia in children’s handwriting.

Upcoming

FALL: Talks at the Rising Stars in Data Science Workshop and the Association for the Study of Higher Education.

News

SUMMER 2024 ∙ Talks at the International Conference on the Science of Science & Innovation and the University of Colorado Boulder Academic Leadership Conference. New paper in PNAS Nexus!

SPRING 2024 ∙ Talks [slides] at the Academic Analytics Research Center and CU Office of Faculty Affairs. Honored to have recieved an Achievement Reward for College Scientists and an Annual Outstanding Paper Award from CU Boulder. I enjoyed participaing in the Atlanta Academy on Science and Innovation Policy! New preprint: Gendered devaluation underlies faculty retention

FALL 2023 ∙ New paper in Science Advances! Covered by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Times Higher Education, Science Careers and Nature News. Featured as an exemplary paper in social and interdisciplinary sciences by Science Advances . New preprint: Book bans in political context: Evidence from U.S. schools. Such a fun collaboration started at a summer school! Passed my dissertation proposal defense and I am officially a PhD candidate! :tada:

SUMMER 2023 ∙ Talks [slides] at the International Conference on Computational Social Science and the Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy [slides]. New preprint: Gender and retention patterns among U.S. faculty.

SUMMER 2022 ∙ Gave talks at the International Conference on Computational Social Science, the Women in Network Science and Diversify NetSci Satellite, and the International Conference on Science of Science and Innovation, and I enjoyed participating in the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science