Ishaan Barrett is a Columbia University senior majoring in Urban Studies with a minor in Political Science. He is the founder and principal of UEI, Co-Directs the DPP, and is executive director of the Policy Intelligence Lab (PILab).
Over the past term, the Policy Insight Lab (PILab) has pushed beyond conventional research workflows to build a new class of policy analysis tools. What began as a simple Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) prototype—intended to extract facts from complex federal documents—has evolved into a dynamic Intelligent Retrieval (IR) engine
Urbanism
Columbia Journalism School was born of Pulitzer’s vision but reshaped by politics, crises, and New York itself. This essay uncovers how a century of tension between profession and academy forged its identity.
Politics and Economics
This paper analyzes NYC’s IDNYC-MOIA partnership through a principal-agent lens, revealing inefficiencies and proposing reforms—like increased communication and agency consolidation—to better serve immigrant communities.
Politics and Economics
In an era where cities shoulder an increasing responsibility for immigrant service provision, local agency funding and monitoring reveals as much about democratic accountability as congressional oversight patterns.
Social Sciences
This piece builds on earlier studies investigating public art in Washington, DC with a focus on LGBTQ placemaking. Now returning to the original religious lens, this note examines the geographies of worship and placemaking in the DC's evolving cultural history.
Social Sciences
This urban survey provides a rough overview of sites of slavery, imprisonment, and Atlantic slave trade in Alexandria, Virginia. It touches sites in the city along the waterfront, within the urban fabric of the city, as well as on the periphery of Alexandria located in DC's periphery.
Urbanism
Jackson Heights is considered one of the most diverse and important places in all of New York City. At the same time, the low quantities of green space in the area invite new, creative ways to integrate infrastructure that promotes community and greenery.
Social Sciences
This study mobilizes deep mapping and GIS spatialization research to investigate how public art and open-space murals are embedded within Washington, DC’s urban landscape. Indexing these public arts allows a more compressive understanding of these vibrant enclaves of the nation’s capital.
Social Sciences
This paper will explore the nature of ephemeral urban spaces with special attention to the physical, linguistic, and political barriers that complexify the asylum and migrant experience for new arrivals in New York.
Social Sciences
The concept of spatial justice emerges as a central component of justice as a contemporary topic; in this way, the very bedrock of justice itself becomes more dynamic and flexible to the changing conditions of our social world.