Ten Years of MSCAPP: Where Public Policy Meets Coding

When the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and the UChicago Department of Computer Science together launched the MS in Computational Analysis and Public Policy (MSCAPP) degree 10 years ago, many things were certain.

The faculty who envisioned MSCAPP knew that the time was right to teach students how to use emerging technologies to advance public policy. They knew that they had built a rigorous two-year program with solid foundations in both policy and computer science. They knew it could draw top students, with 10 taking a leap of faith to join the first cohort.

What wasn’t fully known was where an MSCAPP (also known as CAPP) degree would take those trailblazing students and the scores who have followed. 

It turned out to be to more places than anyone foresaw.

“The range of things that students do after graduation, the range of places where they have impact, the ways that they think, the things that they care about, all of those things are just so far beyond what I imagined when we started CAPP,” said program Co-Founder and Co-Academic Director (CS) Anne Rogers. “They've done things beyond my wildest dreams.”

Rogers, an associate professor of computer science, founded CAPP — among the first such master’s degree programs in the nation — alongside faculty including Christopher Berry, now the William J. and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professor at Harris and director of the UChicago Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation, and others. Jeffrey Grogger, Irving Harris Professor in Urban Policy, recently took on the role of co-Academic Director (Harris) for MSCAPP.

They built a curriculum with statistics, computer science, and public policy analysis at its core. Econometrics, machine learning (ML), cloud computing, data visualization, and application development — and how to view them through a policy lens — complement the core courses for students who come not only to learn how to layer technology onto public policy, but vice versa. Today, as CAPP marks its 10th anniversary, there are about 60 students in each cohort.

“I will forever be grateful to that first group of students because they took a risk,” Rogers said. “They came to an unknown program, and they were phenomenal. Their legacy continues.”

That legacy includes using CAPP as a launchpad to many different kinds of roles in many different kinds of industries, said Rogers, who said she at first expected the degree to lead to jobs in state and local government.

Alumni are data scientists, data engineers, and software engineers; policy analysts and researchers; product managers and program managers; and in roles serving as a bridge between policy people and technical people. They work in government but also in the private sphere or for nonprofits, in politics, and in academia. Some continue their studies after CAPP, pursuing Ph.D.’s. 

CAPP pioneer Mitsue Iwata, who earned her degree in 2016, did head first into government, working for the New York City Mayor's Office of Data Analytics when Mayor Bill de Blasio was in office. She now is in the nonprofit sector as the director of data analytics for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She and her team focus on health services data, tracking trends including abortion access and changes to patient population and demographics.

"It can be challenging to use numbers to describe all the work that is happening. Social impact and outcomes can't always be measured precisely, especially considering the quality or type of data we have access to," said Iwata, who as an undergraduate focused on public policy and sociology. “But it is important to be able to contribute to those discussions and contribute to defining and creating those measures. The tools that I learned at CAPP helped me to not only understand the methodologies but also the ways that they can be implemented with more modern technology.”

With everyone today working with data, CAPP opened a lot of doors, she said. “CAPP made me confident in my skills and experience,” Iwata added. “It made many pathways available to me.”

‘Almost Infinite Paths’

 

Nora Hajjar, MSCAPP’20, echoes Iwata on the possibilities that follow CAPP.

“There are almost infinite paths available to CAPP graduates,” said Hajjar. Now a senior artificial intelligence (AI) engineer at Microsoft, Hajjar said CAPP provided rigorous training and foundations that enabled her to approach her role from math and computer science perspectives, as well as from a broader policy perspective.

Hajjar, with an undergraduate background in political science and economics, works on an applied research team focusing on AI agent frameworks.

Her focus on AI and software engineering means Hajjar uses CAPP computer science and ML/AI skill sets the most in her day-to-day work.

“From a more macro perspective though, understanding people, systems, and society is important for building responsible and useful AI systems that help end-users versus creating harm,” she said. 

“This is a tricky path,” she added. “Most products and services are interested in integrating AI, but it is vital to understand the science of large language models (LLMs), and how they could negatively — or positively  — impact the people and groups that use these products. Having a broader perspective and formal education in public policy, economics, and political science thanks to CAPP helps me to anchor the technical systems that I build with real-world applications.”

At Home in Two Spheres

Now back home in India, Tirumala Venkatesh Kaggundi, MSCAPP’22, is immersed in the nation’s trade policy as the joint director general of foreign trade in the nation’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry (the agency he worked for before heading to Chicago to get his graduate degree).

But when the technical discussions start, Kaggundi said that thanks to CAPP, he is confident he can contribute positively. He doesn’t write code, but frequently talks to the people who do, or to those who translate the government’s requirements into language that coders can understand.

“At times,” he said with a laugh, “when it's required to go into depth and answer questions, the coders ask, ‘How does this guy know this?’” 

During a meeting that centered on chatbots and LLMs, Kaggundi said he showed the tech team the conceptual models he did in Computer Science Professor Amitabh Chaudhary’s class. “‘If you can do this,’ they said, ‘what are you doing here? Why aren’t you working for some AI company?’”, Kaggundi recalled.  

But that was not the path for Kaggundi, who was an engineer before switching to public service, and is now transitioning into another role within the Government of India, this time in defense. “If you make good policies, millions of people will feel the effects,” he said. “And at the end of the day, what do you want? For me, it’s contributing to a positive impact on peoples’ lives.”

A Unique Combination

“Positive impact” is heard often in discussions with Harris alumni. And it was the opportunity to use data for impact that  was key to Natalie Ayers’ CAPP experience.

“During CAPP, I learned about so many organizations using data for good in ways that I hadn't even thought about before I started,” said Ayers, MSCAPP’22, who is now pursuing her Ph.D. at Harvard in the Government Department.

Her career goal? To cross boundaries between practitioner and researcher in the conflict/international affairs space. CAPP, she said, was what set her on this path, and she credits courses she took as CAPP requirements and the electives she chose outside of CAPP, such as in political science. She points to pivotal Harris faculty members, including Rebecca Wolfe and Christopher  Blattman, the Ramalee E. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies. She benefited, she said, from being part of the Institute of Politics. And she learned much from her fellow students, who, she said, bring their many different passions and perspectives to CAPP.

“Everyone was drawn by that same unique combination of policy and technology at CAPP,” she said, “and that combination brings together people who are really well suited to study and work together.”

A New Way of Thinking

CAPP’s “unique combination” is central to the many possibilities the degree affords.

Mario Moreno Zepeda, MSCAPP’19, is one example of such possibilities. Currently chief of staff for UChicago Provost Katherine Baicker, he previously was chief of staff at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, where he worked on a range of President Joe Biden’s policy initiatives, including how to reduce opioid deaths.

Moreno Zepeda credits policy wins to something he learned in CAPP: an approach to problem solving that is very natural to a computer scientist, but is not necessarily the way most people approach problems.

“The CAPP program,” Moreno Zepeda said, “teaches you a very systematic way of computational thinking that I think is sometimes missing in advocacy and policy circles.”

“There's an order and a logic to thinking computationally that is very helpful in every realm of life,” he added. “It’s about asking the right question. It's about collecting the right sets of data, understanding the flaws and strengths of that data, and being able to proceed with your best possible understanding of the data.”

“We had a big problem,” Moreno Zepeda added, referring to opioid overdoses. And as the Biden White House determined what policies to pursue first to have the greatest impact, Moreno Zepeda and his team had to break that problem down into its component parts. Drug overdose deaths in the United States dropped in 2023, the first time since 2018. 

Also central to the degree’s appeal, Moreno Zepeda said, are the opportunities across the wider University of Chicago ecosystem available to CAPP students. 

CAPP delivered great training on data science and public policy, Moreno Zepeda said, and he also was able to participate in an Innovation Fund program at the Polsky Center. He had summer internships centered on drug policy and human rights that took him to Hungary, Colombia, and Mexico City to work, he said, “on the intersection between data science and public policy and subject matter that I cared about.” 

Propelling students into subject matter and work they care about stands out as a hallmark of CAPP, this “unique combination” degree on the cutting edge of the innovation that is transforming the world and its policies.

“Ten years in,” Rogers said, “people are still going off into roles and organizations that just wouldn't have occurred to me in 2014. I'm so excited for the future.”