Julia Dressel ’17 and Research That Went Viral

Can a software program predict crime? That’s a question Julia Dressel ’17 (a double major in Computer Science and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) and Hany Farid, the Albert Bradley 1915 Third Century Professor of Computer Science, set out to answer.

Dressel says that that her research might not have happened without her background in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. “Taking those classes helped me understand how to think about problems that affect individuals and how to think critically about the ways that any sort of bias manifests itself,” she says. “This particular thesis happened because of ways that I have been taught at Dartmouth to think about problems that are affecting our society.”