Daryl DeFord

Dr. DeFord is an Assistant Professor of Statistics at Vassar College. He joined the department of Mathematics and Statistics in 2025, after five years as an Assistant Professor of Data Analytics at Washington State University, where he also earned his BS in Mathematics. He completed his PhD in Mathematics at Dartmouth College under the supervision of Dr. Dan Rockmore, with a dissertation on dynamical models of multiplex networks. After his PhD he was a Postdoctoral Associate in Dr. Justin Solomon’s Geometric Data Processing Group in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During his postdoc he was also affiliated with the Tufts-based Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group, under the supervision of Dr. Moon Duchin.

Much of his current research is focused on applying mathematical, statistical, and computational methods to problems arising in the social sciences, with a particular emphasis on political redistricting and gerrymandering. He has also published papers on social network analysis, combinatorics, graph theory, and pickleball analytics. In addition to his academic work, Dr. DeFord has served as an expert in court cases about redistricting and voting rights.