Advancing Research

The Massive Data Institute (MDI) at Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy serves to advance research for faculty at Georgetown and beyond. From pioneering cutting-edge big data research techniques to establishing best practices for secure and responsible use of data to answer public policy questions, MDI works with researchers in government, academia, and industry to solves societal-scale problems. MDI is supported with generous funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, New Ventures Fund, Tableau Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research, and the State Department.

Resources & Events

Computing Infrastructure Resources

MDI supports faculty research by facilitating access to high capacity computing resources. We use a combination of Google and Microsoft Cloud resources to meet the needs of our faculty and researchers. To date it has already been used by faculty to investigate fraud in presidential elections, understand online movements, process legislative documents and predict forced migration

Georgetown Research Data Center (RDC)

The Georgetown RDC is a joint project of the U.S. Census Bureau and the Massive Data Institute at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.

Proposal Development Support

MDI supports faculty research through assistance with proposal development. When a faculty member applies for an externally sponsored research grant through MDI, an MDI staff member is available to coordinate the proposal submission process, develop a proposal budget and budget justification, and review proposals for compliance with sponsor requirements and university policies and procedures.

Academic Conferences

MDI supports national and international conferences dedicated to computational social science and policy. Recently held events include:

Data Blending

To help facilitate a broader reach of text analytic methods and tools across social, behavioral and economic research, we are creating a community of social scientists across disciplines that will work on different data blending projects to advance their research and have published a white paper discussing the promises and challenges of combining traditional and new forms of data.

Working Research & Collaborations

Learn more about the publications and academic works produced by MDI Researchers, affiliates, and collaborators. View a list of published research, and research that will be published, by our faculty and affiliates.

Conferences and Panels 

Learn more about conference and panel presentations given by our MDI scholars and affiliated researchers.