Who I am
Hi, welcome to Vincent’s website. I am a community-centered mixed-method crime researcher trained in data science. My own interests center around policing, criminal-legal system, and community safety. As of now, I have been on this path for more than six years. Over this time, I learned a lot, worked a lot, and hopefully have somewhat made some contributions to a more safe, equal, and just society. As a researcher, I am heavily influenced by my early years' volunteering experiences with a few criminal justice nonprofits in twin cities in which I worked with community members, heard their stories, and advocated for changes with them. During the process, I realized data-driven research could be a weapon in reforms, which made me a researcher who uses data and story as my blades.
I am pretty much a ‘nerd’ who would talk about research with friends as a way for fun. As a naturalist, I love visiting new places, taking a walk by a lake or river, or listening to noisy yet vibrant heavy metal music. In addition to that, I am also a fan of Chinese/English literature and art history, although I would prefer outdoor walking to indoor museum visiting 8 out of 10 times.
To conclude, I am a male human, a friend, and a researcher. I dream big and small.
What I am doing
As a researcher, I focus on policing, corrections, juvenile delinquency, and school to prison pipeline. Notably, my topics of interests in policing include community policing, warrior mentality training (and its MN dialect - fear-based training), SWAT raids, police powers defined by the Fourth Amendment, body-worn camera policies, and police reforms. Some of my policy writings are published in Chicago Policy Review. Although my training is in data science, I also have tremendous interest in qualitative methods, such as interviews and ethnography. I believe that data-driven (quantitative) and human-centered (qualitative) methods are an integral part of the research mindset and them together are imperative for reaching an unbiased understanding of problems communities today are facing and then finding solutions to these questions. For this reason, I consider myself a mixed-method researcher (also I am really not the type of sitting in front of a computer and coding all-day. Instead, I really enjoy talking with people and working with people).
On the tech end, I find my passion in data storytelling, specifically how to communicate data results with stakeholders through visualizations. I’ve authored numerous visualization reports and data science blogs in a range of publications on Medium (see my Medium page). I believe that impacts only happen when both visualizations and stories are in place. People are not attracted by graphics or stories alone but by the combination of both. With journalism-like narratives of what people have experienced in the system and professional, ethical, and impact-driven data stories, we could influence the public and policymakers. Data storytelling or public-facing writing, I am not an expert on either but I am always learning, exploring, and improving.
Research Areas
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In Criminal-Legal System:
- Policing
- Criminal-legal system and reforms
- Community safety and violence prevention
- Juvenile delinquency and gangs
- Criminal procedures, criminal law, and judicial principles
- Corrections and mass incarcerations
- …
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In K-12 Education System:
- School to prison pipeline
- School punishment and discipline policy and culture
Educaton
September 2021- June 2023, University of Chicago Harris School of Policy, Chicago, IL, US:
- MS-Computational Analysis and Public Policy (MS-CAPP)
August 2017-May 2021, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN, US
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Bachelor of Science, Sociology of law, criminology, and deviance
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Bachelor of Art, Statistics
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Minor, Political Science
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DirecTrack to Teaching
Songs on my playlist
I am a metalhead, especially Metallica!
Some of the songs I recently listened to include:
- The VOID, Children of Bodom
- Angels Don’t Kill, Children of Bodom
- Scream for Silence, Children of Bodom
- Queen of Blades, Avatar
- Destroyer, Parkway Drive
- Ground Zero, Parkway Drive
- Free Fall, In Flames
- Only for the Weak, In Flames
- Master of Puppets, Metallica
- Ride the Lightening, Metallica,
- Welcome Home (Sanitarium), Metallica
- …
Initiatives in progress
- What they experienced, thought, and said: Narrations of people’s stories with the criminal justice system