Thiyaghessan Poongundranar is a data scientist at the Urban Institute. He works with Urban’s Technology and Data Science team and Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy to provide analysis and support for research involving Urban’s National Center for Charitable Statistics.

Poongundranar has applied research experience in machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing in the domains of political economy, public finance, and high-performance computing. He has also worked as a data journalist with Jom Media, where he covered online extremism in his home country, Singapore.

Poongundranar holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the National University of Singapore and a master’s degree in computational social science from the University of Chicago.