Robin Mejia

Robin manages the Statistics and Human Rights Program at the Center for Human Rights Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where she holds a special faculty appointment in the Department of Statistics and Data Science. Her research interests include quantifying human rights violations, the use of surveys to understand population needs and perceptions, and improving the validity and reliability of forensic science procedures. She is a member of the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence, and she partners with researchers at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and the US Department of Labor. Robin earned an MPH in 2012 and PhD in biostatistics in 2016, both from UC Berkeley. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a journalist for more than a decade, covering health and science stories for the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post Magazine, Wired, Science, CNN and other outlets. She uncovered problems at the FBI crime lab, wrote extensively about controversies in epidemiology, and reviewed the use of science technology in human rights investigations. Mejia’s work has won several national journalism awards and been anthologized in the Best Technology Writing series.