{"id":171202,"date":"2025-10-14T11:00:58","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T17:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tecscience.tec.mx\/en\/?p=171202"},"modified":"2025-10-15T11:03:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T17:03:07","slug":"paola-villarreal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tecscience.tec.mx\/en\/human-social\/paola-villarreal\/","title":{"rendered":"When Data Science Stands on the Side of Justice: The Story of Paola Villarreal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\u201cWhen the Court handed down the ruling, they cited the analysis and mentioned my name. When I heard it, the lawyers turned around because they rarely name anyone. They said that thanks to that analysis, to that collaboration, they had been convinced they needed to throw out <strong>95% of the convictions<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s how Mexican data scientist <a href=\"https:\/\/es.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Paola_Villarreal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Paola Villarreal<\/a> recalls the moment in 2017 when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decided to overturn more than 22,000 drug-related convictions of Black and Latino individuals. She shared the story with\u00a0<em><strong>TecScience<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0just hours before presenting her book\u00a0<em><strong>Artificial Intelligence: The New Electronic Brain<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0at the 2025 <a href=\"\/en\/tag\/monterrey-international-book-fair\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Monterrey International Book Fair<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Through the&nbsp;<em><a href=\"https:\/\/data.aclum.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Data for Justice<\/a><\/em>&nbsp;project\u2014using public records from the Massachusetts judicial system\u2014this <strong>self-taught programmer<\/strong> revealed that many of the convictions were based on tampered evidence and cases of racial discrimination. She achieved this social impact through <strong>data science<\/strong>, the discipline that turns vast amounts of information into knowledge to help understand or solve complex problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The tool she developed for the project, the Augmented Narrative Toolkit (ANT), along with her analysis, earned Villarreal recognition from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 2018, she was named to the&nbsp;<em>Innovators Under 35 LATAM<\/em>&nbsp;list by&nbsp;<em>MIT Technology Review<\/em>, where she was honored in the Visionary category. A year later, the BBC included her in its list of <strong>the 100 most influential women in the world<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Data Science as a Tool for Social Justice<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In her book, Paola Villarreal presents artificial intelligence (AI) as one of the key tools in data science\u2014from its origins and current applications, to the challenges it poses in terms of data privacy and ethics, and its potential uses in the society of the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Villarreal, the most important aspect has always been the <strong>social and justice-oriented impact <\/strong>she\u2019s achieved through data science. She shares that, over the years, more and more people regained their freedom. But&nbsp;<em>Data for Justice<\/em> wasn\u2019t the only instance in which she saw the potential of analyzing and presenting information in a way that\u2019s easy to understand to generate social change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Mexico, in 2019, while serving as Data Science Project Coordinator at the National Council of Science and Technology (now Conahcyt), she designed a tool called the <strong>National Information Ecosystem for the Search of Missing Persons <\/strong>(ENIPD, by its Spanish acronym). The tool was created to help researchers more effectively collect, generate, and analyze data related to missing persons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSocial issues, <strong>human rights, and justice are where data science has the most potential<\/strong>\u2014and where it\u2019s most urgently needed. It helps us try to explain phenomena that, due to their complexity, would be impossible to analyze without the tools it offers,\u201d she says. \u201cIn crises like that of missing persons, it can be essential in mitigating the damage, seeking justice for victims and society, and preventing it from happening again. Using data science to access our rights is the best use we can give\u2014not just to data, but to technology as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To build a project with strong social impact, she explains, there must first be multidisciplinary collaboration\u2014not just with data scientists, but also activists, lawyers, journalists, researchers, and experts from civil society organizations. That\u2019s what allows teams to understand the problem\u2019s context, define objectives, and plan for long-term sustainability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s also crucial to have a strong social purpose with a clear goal. In&nbsp;<em>Data for Justice<\/em>\u2014a project supported by a Mozilla Foundation fellowship\u2014Villarreal partnered with the <strong>American Civil Liberties Union<\/strong> (ACLU), an organization with over a century of experience defending civil rights against discrimination and unjust policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cMy goal was crystal clear: to seek justice for those thousands of people. That gave me the drive to accomplish what the state attorneys didn\u2019t want me to do, which was to analyze the databases of convictions, charges, arrests, and names I could connect not just numbers or codes, but actual people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Data Quality for Social Impact<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In her book&nbsp;<em><strong>Artificial Intelligence: The New Electronic Brain<\/strong><\/em>, Villarreal emphasizes that data is as fundamental to AI as atoms are to matter. In that sense, having high-quality information is essential for training models and algorithms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The same principle applies in any data science project, but there are major challenges when obtaining relevant information. For instance, data often isn\u2019t directly available, <strong>requiring public records requests to access it<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to the programmer, <strong>location data<\/strong> is among the most sensitive types of<strong> <\/strong>data. With it, it&#8217;s possible to track individuals over time and uncover patterns in their habits\u2014something that proved useful during the COVID-19 pandemic to study whether there was communication or economic activity between municipalities, which in turn informed public policy decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Other crucial data include poverty indicators, education levels, access to healthcare, and various statistics that, when combined, help provide a fuller understanding of the social context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the biggest challenges\u2014if not the most important one\u2014according to Villarreal, is <strong>data normalization<\/strong>. This involves cleaning and standardizing the data so that different databases can be connected and interpreted together to create better matches and more representative samples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That includes cases where names are written in multiple ways across different sources\u2014with or without accents, with an \u201cs\u201d or a \u201cz\u201d\u2014or where different identifiers are used for the same geographic areas, like postal codes and AGEBs (geographic units grouped by blocks). It\u2019s also essential to translate analytical results into terms that are understandable for decision-makers, whether they\u2019re judges, lawmakers, or members of the press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Applying Data to Decision-Making<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Still, in some cases, even when the information is well-presented and simulation models exist within universities or research centers, \u201cthey aren\u2019t connected or in communication with decision-makers. That\u2019s another problem\u2014we need the data and the knowledge being generated to be tied to public policy and to have a real impact on people\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Boston, Villarreal was able to identify racial bias in the justice system, and she believes that a similar project could reveal important patterns in regions like Latin America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIn Latin America, social class is closely linked to skin color and poverty. It\u2019s the poor who have the least access to justice, education, housing, urban infrastructure, and transportation. Even the environment is affected by discrimination\u2014displaced communities are often forced to live in areas where climate change puts them at greater risk. And when it comes to urban planning, the design of our cities reflects many historical biases.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today\u2019s socially impactful projects can also draw on a growing array of technological tools that have evolved significantly over the years. For instance, Villarreal didn\u2019t use AI as we know it today in&nbsp;<em>Data for Justice<\/em>. But now, its capabilities allow for the automated analysis of thousands upon thousands of documents, the identification of names, institutions, and other categories, and the development of models that can interpret and explain large datasets more clearly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAI opens up new ways to conduct science and research. With it, we\u2019re going to encounter new problems, new challenges, and new opportunities. I\u2019m very hopeful that we\u2019ll continue doing real science with the help of AI\u2014and that it will be of higher quality, more abundant, and more meaningful. That way, we can better understand every aspect of human life, but also the natural world, astronomy, and everything else we need to make sense of.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>Did you find this story interesting? Would you like to publish it? Contact our content editor to learn more at&nbsp;<a href=\"mailto:marianaleonm@tec.mx\">marianaleonm@tec.mx<\/a>&nbsp;<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mexican data scientist Paola Villarreal, recognized by MIT, spoke with TecScience during the 2025 Monterrey International Book Fair, where she discussed the power of data analysis to drive social change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":171203,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[356,572],"class_list":["post-171202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-human-social","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-monterrey-international-book-fair"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v21.0 (Yoast SEO v27.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>When Data Science Stands on the Side of Justice: The Story of Paola Villarreal - TecScience<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mexican data scientist Paola Villarreal, recognized by MIT, spoke with TecScience during the 2025 Monterrey International Book Fair, where she discussed the vast possibilities of data analysis.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tecscience.tec.mx\/en\/human-social\/paola-villarreal\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When Data Science Stands on the Side of Justice: The Story of Paola Villarreal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mexican data scientist Paola Villarreal, recognized by MIT, spoke with TecScience during the 2025 Monterrey International Book Fair, where she discussed the vast possibilities of data analysis.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/tecscience.tec.mx\/en\/human-social\/paola-villarreal\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"TecScience\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-10-14T17:00:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-10-15T17:03:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/tecscience.tec.mx\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2025\/10\/paola-villarreal.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"750\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ricardo Trevi\u00f1o\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Ricardo Trevi\u00f1o\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/tecscience.tec.mx\\\/en\\\/human-social\\\/paola-villarreal\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/tecscience.tec.mx\\\/en\\\/human-social\\\/paola-villarreal\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Ricardo Trevi\u00f1o\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/tecscience.tec.mx\\\/en\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/d0ed5b5fa0ab2c4754211e4addf201dc\"},\"headline\":\"When Data Science Stands on the Side of Justice: The Story of Paola Villarreal\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-10-14T17:00:58+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-10-15T17:03:07+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/tecscience.tec.mx\\\/en\\\/human-social\\\/paola-villarreal\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1285,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/tecscience.tec.mx\\\/en\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/tecscience.tec.mx\\\/en\\\/human-social\\\/paola-villarreal\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/tecscience.tec.mx\\\/en\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/sites\\\/9\\\/2025\\\/10\\\/paola-villarreal.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"artificial intelligence\",\"Monterrey International Book Fair\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Human &amp; 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