About & CV
Public-policy research, with the data work made visible.
I’m Alea Wilbur-Mujtaba, a researcher based in Chicago. I earned my PhD in Public Administration from the University of Illinois Chicago in August 2026. My work brings together public finance, administrative and spatial data, reproducible research, and policy analysis.
I enjoy the parts of research that connect a question to usable evidence: understanding how a government dataset was assembled, reconciling records that do not quite agree, and building tools that make the next analysis easier to reproduce.
Academic CV
My academic CV includes research, publications, teaching, and awards. September 2026 edition.
Research experience
Government Finance Research Center, University of Illinois Chicago
Research Assistant · January 2023–December 2025
Applied property-tax research on residential exemptions and commercial and industrial incentives. My contributions include analytical data pipelines, maps and figures, public replication materials, and automated reporting. I continue technical maintenance of the related research resources.
Institute of Government and Public Affairs, University of Illinois System
Research Assistant · January 2022–June 2026
Coauthored Fiscal Futures research and developed reproducible workflows to harmonize Illinois fiscal data across years, validate records, and support recurring analysis and publication.
Doctoral research, University of Illinois Chicago
2019–2026
My dissertation, Risk Perception and Real Estate Values in Cook County, Illinois, studies housing-market responses to flood-risk information. Explore the project.
Education
PhD in Public Administration, University of Illinois Chicago · August 2026
Master of Public Administration, University of Illinois Chicago · May 2019
Concentrations in Public Management and Financial Management; certificates in Emergency Management and Continuity Planning, and Geospatial Analysis and Visualization.
BS in Economics with Mathematical Emphasis, University of Wisconsin–Madison · May 2016
Certificate in Environmental Studies.
Teaching & public service
I designed and taught Programming and Data Analysis for Public Policy at UIC in Fall 2021, creating lessons and exercises in programming, data management, analysis, and visualization. I also supported courses in data analytics, policy analysis, and public administration.
My applied government experience includes Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications during the 2020 COVID-19 response and community engagement for the Village of Skokie’s five-year Community Development Block Grant Consolidated Plan in 2019. My master’s capstone examined congestion on the Chicago River.
Methods & tools
- Data and reproducibility: R, tidyverse, sf, targets, Quarto, Git/GitHub, documentation, validation, and automated reporting.
- Analysis: panel data, fixed effects, difference-in-differences, event studies, instrumental variables, survey analysis, and geospatial analysis.
- Additional tools: ArcGIS Pro, SQL, Tableau, Stata, SPSS, Qualtrics, and Excel.
Selected recognition
- Climate Tax Fellowship, National Tax Association · 2026 Fall Conference.
- Ciccarone Public Finance Scholarship, UIC · 2022–2023.
- ICPSR Summer Program Scholarship · 2022.
- Certificate of Merit, United States Coast Guard, Marine Safety Unit Chicago · 2019.