• CAREER Q&A

Creating an ‘all comers’ research group in quantitative history

Nathan Alexander's laboratory welcomes ‘anyone and everyone’ to use a mix of mathematics and computing to solve challenges in society.
By
  1. Rachel Crowell

    1. Rachel Crowell is a freelance journalist and editor based near Des Moines, Iowa.

Nathan Alexander stands in front of a whiteboard during a meeting with his researchers, who are sitting around a table in the foreground

Nathan Alexander runs a quantitative-history research group at Howard University in Washington DC, with a flattened hierarchy to encourage a better exchange of ideas and approaches. Credit: Cheriss May for Nature

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Inclusion — not gatekeeping — is a theme in mathematician Nathan Alexander’s laboratory at Howard University in Washington DC. His quantitative-histories workshop is a computational and community hub for studying social problems, such as housing insecurity and homelessness. He founded that lab while in a previous post at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, and has now expanded it to include Howard and another site at the Institute for Racial Justice in Chicago, Illinois.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00860-3

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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