Founder, Data for Policy and Editor-in-Chief, Data & Policy

Senior Research Associate, UCL

Policy Fellow Alumna, Centre for Science and Policy

Data & Policy is a peer-reviewed, open access venue dedicated to the potential of data science to address important policy challenges. The journal aims to promote a new theory of policy-data interactions by publishing work that considers systems of policy and data and how they relate to each other. The journal publishes research examining the barriers to the greater use of data and data analytics in policy-making and governance initiatives, and contributions that explore how data can be used in an ethical, responsible and efficient manner. All research articles are accompanied by a policy significance statement that allows a wide audience to understand the potential impact of the findings.

Data for Policy is an independent initiative to promote interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral discussion for more efficient use of data in policy making processes. The inaugural conference was held at the University of Cambridge in 2015, and the initiative receives further support from many prominent institutions including LSE, Imperial College, UCL, University of Oxford, Office for National Statistics, Royal Statistical Society and other key stakeholders.

Prior to this, Zeynep was a director of the London Centre for Social Studies (2010-2015) where she convened the LCSS Public Policy platform. She hosted a number of research and policy meetings on the pressing social policy problems, led a number of training activities for early-career researchers and several community projects at grassroots level campaigning for greater social mobility through education and professional development.

Zeynep holds a PhD on biologically plausible pattern localisation and parameter estimation on visual data from Imperial College London (2009). Her research addressed issues of digital data representation and transformation estimations through a brain circuitry model. She was also Assistant Coordinator of Imperial’s Cognitive Systems Network, a cross-disciplinary project bringing together researchers into both biological and machine cognition. During her PhD studies she was also Visiting Scholar at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, exploring research into machine learning and signal processing methods. She also holds an MSc in Information Engineering from City University London and a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Ankara, Turkey. In 2014-15 academic year, Zeynep also took a visiting researcher position at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge.