Bailey Flanigan: A Curiosity-Driven Journey From Wisconsin Farmland to MIT’s Cutting Edge of Computation and Democracy
Bailey Flanigan’s intellectual odyssey began not in a sterile laboratory or a hushed lecture hall, but amidst the sprawling farmlands of Wisconsin. From her earliest childhood, Flanigan was characterized by a potent, yet remarkably broad, curiosity. This innate drive propelled her through a childhood marked by spirited, and at times, unruly energy, which she channeled into diverse pursuits. Her young mind was a fertile ground for experimentation, leading to the construction of elaborate booby traps, ambitious experimental construction projects, a profound fascination with medicine, and a creative outlet in writing fiction and composing music. Even at a young age, she harbored a desire to address societal inequities, conceptualizing nonprofit organizations aimed at mitigating social inequality.
By the time she entered high school, Flanigan’s intellectual explorations began to crystallize around specific areas of intense interest. She candidly admits to a lack of motivation for pursuing Advanced Placement (AP) classes merely for the sake of accumulating credentials. Instead, her academic energy was ignited by subjects that offered a canvas for creativity and problem-solving. These were the classrooms where mathematics could be harnessed to tackle real-world challenges, where creative writing offered an avenue for expression, where music provided a unique language, and where the humanities allowed for the deep exploration of complex ideas and the forging of connections between seemingly disparate concepts. Flanigan describes her engagement with these subjects as obsessive, viewing each class as an invaluable opportunity to probe her intuitions and nascent interests. Rather than immersing herself in extracurricular clubs, she dedicated significant time to independent thought and creative endeavors, meticulously dissecting what truly resonated with her.
Today, Flanigan stands as a distinguished shared faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), holding appointments across the prestigious MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, the Department of Political Science, and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). Her research leadership extends to her role as a principal investigator at the MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems. Her formative research experiences were cultivated at esteemed institutions including the University of Wisconsin, the National Institutes of Health, Google, and a consortium of leading universities such as Carnegie Mellon, Drexel, Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford. Her current research agenda is sharply focused on leveraging computational and mathematical tools to pioneer innovative pathways for robust and meaningful democratic participation.
Her academic and professional trajectory has undeniably spanned vast intellectual territories, encompassing disciplines as varied as medicine and bioengineering, public health, economics, and her most recent joint appointment at MIT, which commenced in the fall of 2025, bridging computer science and political science. Flanigan reflects that this interdisciplinary path was not a meticulously planned strategy, but rather a natural consequence of her relentless pursuit of problems that struck her as most pressing or inspiring at any given moment. She acknowledges that this journey often placed her in situations where she lacked the conventional qualifications or standard training. While these circumstances could occasionally be precarious, they also proved to be exceptionally rewarding, fostering an enhanced capacity to quickly grasp the distinct languages and methodologies of new disciplines—a skill she deems indispensable to her current research and professional endeavors.
During her undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Flanigan engaged in both laboratory-based research and computational work. In a wet lab setting, she focused on identifying therapeutic targets in cancer research, while concurrently undertaking computational investigations into tumor genetics. Although she found this research intellectually stimulating, a growing sense of unease began to surface regarding its potential real-world impact. She articulated a concern that the scientific advancements she was developing might, at best, benefit only a small and affluent segment of the global population, while a much larger number of individuals suffered from diseases that were far more preventable.
This profound concern about equitable access to healthcare prompted Flanigan to pivot her focus toward public health. Here, she directed her efforts toward researching microfluidic devices designed for HIV detection, with a specific emphasis on their applicability in low-resource settings. However, her introspection extended beyond the immediate technical challenges. She remained troubled by the systemic factors that contributed to the scarcity of resources in these regions, which led her to explore the field of economics.
Concurrently, Flanigan’s academic advisors played a crucial role in challenging her preconceived notions about her own capabilities and potential. Steven Wright, a distinguished professor of law and creative writing at UW-Madison, served as an invaluable informal mentor throughout her undergraduate career. Together, they collaborated on a case at the Wisconsin Innocence Project, a testament to Flanigan’s burgeoning interest in social justice. Wright, she states, was instrumental in guiding her through her evolving interests across science, social inequality, and economics. He was, in her words, "one of the people most responsible for convincing me that I could aim higher in my career, and that I could actually go to places like MIT or Harvard."
Further encouragement came from Debbie Berger and Julie Stubbs, the co-heads of the UW-Madison scholarship office. They repeatedly urged Flanigan to apply for a Goldwater Scholarship, a prestigious award recognizing outstanding undergraduates in science, mathematics, and engineering. Initially, Flanigan admits to dismissing their emails as spam, harboring the belief that she was not the type of individual who would be considered for such an accolade. Their persistent outreach, however, ultimately persuaded her to submit an application, a decision that, in her own words, "started to change the horizons I perceived for myself."
Following her graduation from UW-Madison, Flanigan accepted a position as a predoctoral research assistant in economics at Princeton University. It was during this period that Professor Evita Nestoridi, now an associate professor at Stony Brook University, provided another pivotal moment of support. Nestoridi, recognizing Flanigan’s burgeoning interest in formal mathematics, permitted her to audit her real analysis class. Flanigan describes this experience as her "first real exposure to formal mathematics and proofs," a revelation that profoundly altered her career trajectory. Despite her initial reservations, Nestoridi’s conviction that Flanigan possessed the aptitude for graduate-level mathematics emboldened her to apply to computer science PhD programs in the subsequent fall.
Choosing Carnegie Mellon University for her doctoral studies, Flanigan embarked on research centered on social choice theory and democratic decision-making. This research perfectly aligned with her dual passions for rigorous technical investigation and the fundamental question of "who gets what and why," a phrase she attributes to Nobel Prize-winning economist Al Roth. Her doctoral work culminated in the development of innovative algorithms designed to randomly select participants for citizens’ assemblies. These algorithms are particularly relevant in scenarios where willing participants self-select in ways that do not accurately represent the broader population.
Addressing Representational Challenges in Citizen Assemblies
Flanigan’s research addresses a critical challenge in contemporary democratic processes: ensuring genuine representation in deliberative bodies. In a policy brief, she illustrated this with a hypothetical example of an assembly convened to discuss artificial intelligence. She posited that the pool of willing participants might disproportionately comprise younger, more educated citizens with a strong interest in technology. Such a skew, she warned, could lead to the underrepresentation of other groups who, despite having a significant stake in the issue, might be less inclined or able to self-select.
The computational tools Flanigan has developed aim to strike a delicate balance between achieving representative diversity and upholding crucial principles of the selection process. These principles include ensuring equality of opportunity for all individuals to participate, maintaining resistance to potential manipulation of the selection process, and fostering transparency. Each of these elements, Flanigan argues, can profoundly influence the public’s perception of a decision-making group’s legitimacy.
Empowering Democratic Participation Through Open-Access Tools
The practical application of Flanigan’s groundbreaking work is now accessible through panelot.org, a widely utilized open-access website that hosts algorithms for the random selection of citizen assembly participants. The platform is designed to guide practitioners through complex technical trade-offs, making these considerations readily understandable and enabling optimization based on the specific priorities of the users. This initiative democratizes access to sophisticated tools for enhancing democratic processes, empowering a broader range of organizations and policymakers to implement more inclusive and representative decision-making mechanisms.
Flanigan’s motivation stems from a deep-seated commitment to improving the mechanisms by which the public engages in political decision-making. She believes that for any political solution to achieve lasting viability, "the public needs to feel that it was arrived at via a legitimate political process—at least under the forms of government I find most appealing." This underscores her conviction that the perceived legitimacy of a democratic process is as crucial as the substance of the decisions it produces.
Beyond her pioneering work on citizens’ assemblies, Flanigan’s research continues to explore novel avenues for systematically eliciting public input on complex policy decisions. Her investigations also delve into the nuanced ways in which the framing of questions in preference elicitation contexts can significantly influence the conclusions drawn from public opinion. This ongoing research highlights her commitment to advancing the theoretical understanding and practical implementation of more effective public deliberation.
A Symbiotic Environment for Interdisciplinary Innovation
Flanigan expresses immense gratitude for the opportunity to pursue these critical questions from within both the political science and EECS departments at MIT. This unique interdisciplinary positioning, she explains, affords her the intellectual freedom to explore both the political and technical dimensions of tools designed to facilitate more direct forms of governance with an unparalleled depth.
Her journey, driven by an insatiable curiosity and a willingness to traverse diverse intellectual landscapes, feels remarkably congruent with the ethos of the MIT environment. She recounts an early sense of belonging at the institution, where her unconventional ways of thinking and problem-solving, which had sometimes seemed peculiar in other settings, were not only accepted but celebrated as strengths that enhanced her contribution. This, she emphasizes, has been a "super refreshing feeling" and has been "100 percent borne out since I arrived," solidifying MIT as an ideal crucible for her pioneering research at the intersection of technology and democracy.
